


Unraveled Wires

by abyssalUpwelling



Category: The LEGO Movie (2014)
Genre: A lot of space squad shenanigans, Alternate Universe - Human, Cyborgs, Flashbacks, Happy Ending, Hugs, M/M, Rex WAS Emmet and may act Emmet like at some points in the fic no questions at this time, Soulmates, a lot of fluffy nice stuff going on this fic cause I yearn, character death is brought up but everyone is effectively immortal so it's fine, hand holding, mild violence but there's warnings in front of it to let you skip it in chapter 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26759494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyssalUpwelling/pseuds/abyssalUpwelling
Summary: Soulmates, cyborgs, and adventurers, what else could you need? A fun story answering the simple question of what if Rex and Benny were soulmates, and what if Benny was a cool cyborg, oh and what if they lived in a semi-realistic human world instead of one made of plastic- Anyways, if you want answers to those questions just read on through!
Relationships: Benny/Lenny (The LEGO Movie), Benny/Rex Dangervest
Comments: 11
Kudos: 8





	1. In The Box For Safe-Keeping

**Author's Note:**

> This is 3 Act fic, and chapters 1-3 take place in Act 1. The first act focuses on the two soulmates meeting!
> 
> The fic takes place in the middle of Rex’s redemption arc. There wasn’t a Systar kidnapping in this universe, but Rex still tried to like do something akin to causing Armomeggedon albeit without time travel involved, but he was ultimately stopped. He hasn’t tried to reconnect with his old so-called friends, so since that event he’s been just working on some self-improvement. 
> 
> TLDR; Rex is still Rex but he’s trying to become a little more of how he was when he was Emmet. He probably won’t ever be able to fully get back to who he was before, but he’s trying to be more trusting and less cold-hearted.

A loud storm rages outside, crashes of lightning shake the apartment as a tired Rex flips through television channels, seeming pretty bored as he switches it to a documentary and moves his focus to his phone, leaving the television’s audio to buzz slightly in the background.   
  
‘Soulmates, what are they? Sure lots of people have them, and you may find yourself with your loved one right now, but what do we  _ really _ know about this magical phenomena that links to people together for their whole lives?’   
  
An esteemed scientist, with a name tag that reads Dr. Donatello, poses that previous question while a series of images showing different individuals pop onto the screen that are slowly connected together by a bright pink string.   
  


‘We know this phenomena started a little less than 200 years ago, and we know that only soulmates can see their own ‘Fate String’. That doesn’t mean they can’t be detected by science since it’s possible for machines to pick up on the energies given off by these creations. And for some reason the ‘Fate String’ is strongest under the light of a full moon. And of course, we all know that when the ‘Fate String’ is at full strength during its first attachment of two or more lovers, it will cause them to switch bodies.’   
  
A flash of images pass by showing people waking up and looking confused. Rex looks away from his phone to roll his eyes, and mindlessly scratch his stubble, seeming to find this documentary ‘dumb’.   
  
‘That’s right, it’s the one part of the phenomena that’s still completely baffling scientists to this day, people will switch bodies with the soulmates and they only transfer back after uniting with their soulmate and connecting with them in an intimate way, such as a kiss.’   
  
The screen switches to show multiple people holding one another in a tight embrace, causing Rex to scowl at his TV in annoyance.   
  
‘But while we don’t know how to explain that yet, we have found answers on how to sever this soulmate bond, how people lose their connection upon their death, and how people sometimes switch bodies beyond just the first connection. We’ll explore all of those situations and much more tonight after this commercial break.’

Now, Rex, a rather attractive guy somewhere between 27-36 depending on who’s asking, sits up, feeling a headache coming on. He looks around for the remote to finally shut off the TV, when a loud commercial catches his attention.   
  
Several bright and flashing colors move across the screen as a commercial for an upcoming concert involving the super famous and beloved popstar Wyld-

Before the commercial finishes playing Rex shuts the television off and tosses the remote over his shoulder.

_ Maybe the universe just wants me to have a bad night,  _ he thinks to himself as heads into his kitchen.   
  
He searches through his cabinets for a moment before grabbing some medicine, taking a few pills with a swig of coffee from a pot he brewed earlier that morning and just left out all day. 

It seems he’s been having a rough few days, as evident by how unkempt his apartment is, trash bags needing to be taken out, a pile of laundry that needed to be done, and half eaten food left abandoned on the counter.

He lets out a small grumble as he finishes off the coffee, annoyed his headache wasn’t going away, so he figures he’ll just text his  friend neighbor. 

  
  
  


He sends out a quick text, but as he starts typing a longer response to follow that one, he can feel his eyes start to grow heavy, and suddenly breathing gets harder, and harder. Rex falls to his knees as his hands raise to his chest, he tries to yell out, but his voice doesn’t leave him, and he fully collapses against the kitchen floor with a loud thud.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


Rex slowly awakens in a place that’s much darker than his kitchen should be. He reaches a hand out only for it to reach a flimsy wall. If he had to guess he’d say he’s been put into some sort of box, with the only light coming from something on his face.   
  
He tries to figure out what exactly is on his face, but when he reaches his hands to his face he finds he can’t feel anything there, and then a second later he realizes he can’t really feel anything at all, it was like his hands had gone completely numb, maybe the battery died?

Before he can have a second to process what’s going on, he hears some voice not too far away.   
  
“Did you see that lightning strike, thing was like bright blue, that was freaking crazy.”   
  
“Dude focus! That thing turned on some of the machines in here we need to turn them off before they explode or something.”   
  
Rex, perplexed at the voices that sound like some security guards on patrol. But that would mean he was being contained somewhere, and why would someone want to lock him up?    
  
Well sure, people would want to lock him up if they knew he was some messed up undead creature with dangerous powers, but no one knew that about him. No one that could take him down.

  
But here he was, locked away, so obviously someone took him down, and there wasn’t time to deliberate on who or why. 

He had spent enough his life trapped away, and he wasn’t about to do that again. So with a raised fist he punches the side of the box he’s trapped in. The thing seems so old, so dusty and weak he could feel it already start to break from one punch.   
  
“Yo dude, I heard something down here.”   
  
“Uggh I think that’s the hazardous robotics aisle, I’m going back to get my taser.”   
  
“C’mon man don’t leave me here alone, it’s getting kind of scary.”   
  
Rex, choosing to worry about those security guys later punches the box again, this time little bits of electricity fly from his wrist as the box breaks around him.

  
He checks out his new surroundings, it looks like he’s in a really huge warehouse, and he’s currently resting on top of a high shelf.

“Oh fu- DUDE ONE OF THE ROBOTS BROKE OUT.”   
  
Rex watches as the security guard below him runs away, and Rex being one for theatrics, jumps down from the shelf (his legs feel weird but he doesn’t care about that right now) and does a superhero landing right in front of the poo sucker, landing on the cold hard concrete with enough force that he leaves behind a dent in it. (Which should hurt him, but it doesn't: his whole body is very numb at the moment, but he ignores that.)   
  
He takes a second to enjoy the guy cowering before him, before punching him square in the jaw and sending him flying back, crashing into some dangerous looking boxes. 

He then stands still for a second, his head tilted back as he tries to figure out why this guy had thought he was a robot, but as footsteps approach he gets his head back in the game and swivels around to see another security guard, presumably the one that had disappeared before, holding onto a taser for dear life.

He rushes the guy, landing a blow in his ribs, but as he knocks him to the ground the guy sticks the taser into his side, and Rex freezes for a second, expecting to be sent to the ground from the shock of the device.   
  
But all that happens is more electricity flies out from around his hands, so he looks down to the mortified guard who is now scared for his life and picks him up by his shirt, “which way’s the exit?”   
  
(Why was his voice messed up? Something really weird was going on, besides just the whole being kidnapped and brought to a freaky warehouse.)

The guard meekly points to his left and Rex tosses him to the side, running through this huge facility, passing by many other guards who seemed to be pretty freaked out at the moment. He doesn’t waste time to fight them, just zooming on by as he finally gets eyes on a door leading out of here. Alarms start to blare as he gets closer to it, assumingly some of the guards he left standing had enough brain cells to activate it.   
  
He sighs, or attempts to sigh, his body seems incapable of sighing at the moment, as he rushes for the door, annoyed to find that it was locked. So he goes to kick it, and then kicks it again, the door proving to be a lot harder to break through than the box.   
  
He could hear people approaching from behind so he decides to say  _ screw it _ and puts all his energy into sending a punch into the door, causing sparks to fly everywhere, and nearby debris to catch on fire.    
  
But it works. The door swings open and Rex rushes out, taking a moment to breathe in some fresh air. Or he tries to, but he realizes he can’t breathe at all. Upon realizing this he glances down to try and get a look at himself in the dim moonlight appearing between the clouds as the storm dissipates. He doesn’t get much time to analyze the metal body with loose and tangled wires sticking out, as the security guards start to surround him, and he takes off again, hopping over a fence and running into the dark forest surrounding this compound he was at.

  
  


  
And then he runs, he runs for a long time, carefully avoiding to crush branches and bushes as he jumps out of the way of anything that would impede his path, not wanting to give the guys at the compound an easy path to follow.

Eventually, after what seems like an hour of running, (sure he knew he was fit but it was weird he didn’t feel exhausted at all from that), he notices he can no longer hear the alarms blare behind him, and takes a moment to be completely still as he relaxes, taking comfort in the silence around him.

  
He slowly walks forward, approaching a small pond that sits in the foliage of the forest. The still water allows the full moon to shine down and illuminate this area with a calming ambiance.   
  
Rex leans down, getting close to the water, trying to get a good look at his own reflection.   
  
It wasn’t something he recognized, it was like he was looking at some clunky 80’s robot. Or maybe like a spacesuit stuffed with wires? That might be more accurate.   
  
Where his face, (the helmet?) should be there was a glitched screen displaying what looked like a simplistic happy face. The body of this thing, was a very faded blue, and pretty beat up, and the hands, while pretty well made and allowed pretty exact movements with their intricate designs were still broken enough to be sending off sparks, and one of the hands had a bright pink wire on a finger-   
  
_ Oh that one isn’t a wire. _

Rex pulls up the string close to his face, staring at in disbelief. He looked behind himself, seeing the bright pink string disappear into the distance.   
  
He takes a seat in front of the lake and rests his head in his hands, finally taking a moment to process what’s going on.   
  
_ Okay, so I have a new soulmate. That shouldn’t be possible, but I’m obviously switched with him, so I guess it is possible. _   
  
Rex removes his hands from his face so he can study them a moment.   
  
_ So this guy, he’s a robot, that’s pretty dangerous and also locked up by the government. _

He lets out a small eclectic hum of a chuckle, pretty happy with the sound of that. He guessed it wouldn’t be too bad to have a soulmate if they were an illegal killer robot, but wait-   
  
He looks to his arms, which red liquid is currently dripping down from.   
  
_ What kind of robot bleeds? _


	2. Gently Beeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the 2nd chapter, where we get to see the switch from Benny's perspective!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a playlist for the fic, some of the songs don’t make sense until later chapters so it’s like fun foreshadowing in music form: https://8tracks.com/pixelbirb/unraveled-wires

Far away from any security guards or blaring alarms, an individual sits on the ground. He’s trying to calm himself as he listens a storm die down outside of the apartment he rests in.   
  
The guy raises a hand to his head, and then gets confused as to why his face feels so scruffy. And then gets confused as to why he can feel, his robotic hands didn’t have any receptors in them to feel, he should know he built them. Man it’s been years since he thought about the limitations his cyborg body had-   
  
And with that Benny hops to his feet in a panic _ , it had been years _ , he clearly remembers sitting around in sleep mode in that darn box for like 730 days before his batteries depleted. He looks around trying to figure where he’d woken up, or how he was alive.

After deducting that he’s in an apartment, he gets up and makes his way around the messy place and finds a bathroom. Though once he finds one, it doesn’t seem to explain a lot.

He silently stands before the mirror, now more confused than before.   
  
It wasn’t his robotic screen looking at him, or even his old human face, this was someone he’d never seen before. A pretty good looking human face with eyes that looked like they were glowing green, perfectly maintained stubble, teeth that were for some reason sharp as hell, and all of this was surrounded by a floofy mess of dark brown hair. 

And as he raises a hand in the mirror, his eyes are quickly drawn to the bright pink string tied around his finger.    
  
“I have a soulmate,” he whispers out, pulling his (his soulmate’s?) hand closer to examine the Fate String, complete shock overtaking his face. He is only broken out of the trance as a thought passes through his mind causing him to yell out, “oh shIT- My soulmate is trapped in a government facility right.”   
  
He runs out of the bathroom in a haste to get out of here, but he moves too fast and slips on some loose laundry, sending him crashing to the ground.   
  
Benny, lying on the floor contemplating his life choices up to that moment, is quickly distracted by some weird noise originating from within the apartment. He follows the beeping until he’s back in the kitchen and finds a strange machine on the ground. He tilts his head as he picks it up, figuring it to be some sort of weird pager, one with a fully colored screen with more pixels than should be possible to fit on it.    
  
Maybe his soulmate was some sort of alien who had access to cool sci-fi technology, that would be hot.   
  
While holding the device in his hands it beeps again and he almost drops it as a message shows up on the screen.   
  
‘Yo Rex why aren’t you picking up my calls??? You text me ‘hey I’m not feeling well’, and then just ghost me??’   
  
Benny lets out a small, “hmm,” as he looks at the message, if his soulmate was writing in english he probably wasn’t an alien. Technology probably got really advanced in the few years he’d been asleep, that’s all. He continues to read through a few more of the messages this person had sent to his soulmate (who he now figured was named Rex).   
  
He finally stops scrolling when he notices the name at the top of the screen for this person. Jenny? Well that’s a weird coincidence, his sister is named-   
  
Before he can finish that thought he hears a loud thud as the door is kicked open and a voice yells out as someone walks in, “Dangervest you didn’t respond so I’m breaking in, if you’re passed out again I’m gonna charge you this time for the gas to drive you to the hospi- oh.” She stops her spiel as she sees Rex standing before her, looking healthier than he had been the past few days.   
  
She ‘s looking pretty skeptical at him as ‘Rex’ raises his hand and gives a weak wave, but she shrugs that off and takes a seat on his couch, “well, uh sorry about your door, man, I’ll get that fixed tomorrow. I really thought you were falling apart, I mean to be fair you’ve been super depressed lately.   
  
When the only response is “Jenny?” She looks over to him even more doubtful that everything was normal here.   
  
Benny was looking pretty confused at the moment, he’s only really able to say her name as his mind races to try and remember when he last saw her, it was back at the Classic Space HQ....   
  
His friends were trying to sneak him out of the building before his diagnostic test, trying to save him before he got cut open and everyone learned his horrible secret. But they were too late, weren’t they? That seems right, the last thing he remembers before waking up in that crate was, the blood- And Denny rushing in to stop him...

He glances away from Jenny as he rubs his hands, tracing the string tied around his finger as he tries to clear his head and figure out how to talk to Jenny. A good ol ‘ _ hey it’s me your dead bro _ ,’ would work probably. Wait no it wouldn’t, that’s stupid.   
  
“Yooo Earth to Dangervest, you alright? Are you having trouble talking?”   
  
Benny knows he needs to respond and he needs to get to his soulmate so he takes a deep sigh (man he missed being able to breathe so much), and points to his hand where the string is, sure Jenny wouldn’t be able to see it but she should get the gesture, “I’m not Rex, I’m his soulmate.”   
  
Jenny blinks a few times before bolting up and dashes over to him to give him a friendly punch on the shoulder, “no kidding! Who would’ve thought that, I mean Rex getting a new soulmate? What a lucky guy!”

“New-” Benny stops himself from finishing that thought remembering he needs to stay focused on rescuing this guy, “I don’t have time for that, listen,” Benny grabs Jenny by the shoulders (man it was weird to be taller than her now), “I need to get to Rex as soon as possible, it’s complicated to explain but as long as he’s me he’s in danger.”

And his sister doesn’t question him at all; she just gives him a nod, “figures Dangervest would probably be matched with someone who’s dangerous. I can get you to him, Rex’s car is in the parking lot and I always wanted to try driving it!”

  
  


Jenny breaks away from Benny’s grasp and bolts to the door grabbing the keys hanging near the entrance, looking back to him before motioning for him to follow, “well c’mon I need you to lead me to him.”

Benny bites his lip, still nervous about all this, and stays silent as he follows Jenny to the car.

Once they make it to the vehicle the ex-astronaut can't help but stare at it for a good minute. It was a weird looking jeep, dark blue with a green dinosaur logo painted on the side. He checked the parking lot for any other weirdly colored cars, and this was the only one that was so different. But he did get an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach as he realized he didn’t recognize most of the other cars out here.    
  
How long has he been in storage? He glances back over to Jenny who was sitting in the car motioning for him to get in, and he obliges getting in and putting on his seatbelt.   
  
She looked pretty much how he remembered her, maybe a little older, but definitely not old enough to justify a long period of time passing.

And without hesitating she drives the car out of the parking lot and onto the main road, “hey I just realized, I never got your name.”

“It’sssssssssssss Benny,” he manages to speak out, slinking down into his seat as figures he should just be honest about it, as she would see Rex in his decaying robot body soon enough.

“Oh, that’s a cool name, my brother was named Benny.”   
  
“Really, cause you and Denny said I should’ve picked a cooler name-”

There’s some sort of fire in Jenny’s eye as she pulls the car off to the side of the road and hits the brakes hard causing Benny to lunge forward as she looks over to him with some sort of judgemental sibling stare as she speaks out one word, “bro.”

“Haha,” Benny rubs the back of his neck as he looks back out the window, scared to meet Jenny’s eye at the moment, “so like hey, it’s been awhile.”

Jenny’s quiet for a moment, long enough that Benny looks back to her, to see her look pretty dumbfounded, finally she responds to him, “bro, it’s been thirty years.”   
  
“That- that can’t be right? I mean I wouldn’t have survived long enough in that robot body, and you don’t look like you’re in, what would you be, maybe 50? 60 now?”   
  
She rolls her eyes at him and waves her hand and lets out a small huff, “I got into necromancy after, The Incident, it has some nice benefits like- We can talk about that later, where the hell have you been?”

Benny gives a shrug, “I’ve been locked away in some dumb government facility. But I don’t know how I’m alive, I shouldn’t be alive! But, people can’t soulmate switch with a dead body, right?”   
  
Jenny opens her mouth to answer, then closes it, thinks a moment longer before finally responding, “Rex might be the one person that would be able to. He’s sort of, undead.”

“Oh,” Benny responds giving a ‘oh wtf’ face as he lifts his hands to gesture ‘what am I supposed to do with that information’, before changing the topic, “so, what’s the plan going in here, should we just go grab my corpse from the government facility and I switch with Rex and go back to being dead?”   
  
Jenny gives him a small smack on the side of the head, “what? No, dude I just told you I’m a necromancer, I’ll resurrect your corpse, if you’re cool with that it is. It was always part of the plan for me to do some magic on you after you got found. I just always figured Lenny would be the one to find you. Never thought…”   
  
“I’d get a soulmate?”   
  
“That your soulmate would be one of the undead people under my supervision,” and with a sigh Jenny pulls the car back onto the road, “listen we can do catching up later, we should focus on getting to Rex, so give me directions to him.”

  
  


“Well I don’t remember the exact address of the secret facility, but I remember it was by-”   
  
He gets cut off as Jenny places a hand on her face, rubbing her temple, “Benny for the love of the Man Upstairs, tell me where to go using the string.”   
  
Benny gives out a small laugh, “oh, right, that’s kind of the point of these things,” he looks down to the bright pink string phasing through the car and down the road, “they lead us to our soulmates.”


	3. The Day They Found Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rex runs out of the forest and gets pissed he found out someone was driving his jeep without asking first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter for Act 1, the lads finally meet!

Rex, back on the run, was trying to push the confusing thoughts of his robotic soulmate out of his head as he followed the pink string leading him through the dense forest.

After a long while of dashing past towering trees in the bleak darkness that the canopies of leaves above have created, he finally sees something new. He emerges from the forest, walking out to see an empty highway. Looking down the road there’s a faint dot that he can make out as some car’s headlights in the distance. And said car seems to be approaching at a rapid rate.

He jumps back behind the trees, unsure if the person behind the wheel was part of the compound he had just escaped from. But, even if they weren’t, they probably weren’t going to help a random bleeding robot on the side of the road.

He watches as the car slows to a stop and pulls over. In his chest he can hear a loud frantic beep like it’s trying to imitate a rapid heart beat. There had to be a reason they were getting out here,  _ was he not fast enough? Did they spot him? Did the robotic body have a tracker in i _ t?   
  
But despite his internal freakout he remains motionless, keeping an eye on the individual, no individuals, he sees a second person in the car. Well it doesn’t matter how many people are in the car, this robot body can pack a punch, he can probably knock them out and steal their- jeep?   
  
Wait, that's his jeep.   
  
Completely forgetting the situation he was in and the panic he was experiencing, he walks right out and asks the two individuals standing outside the car, “hey why do you have my car?”

And in a voice he recognizes as his own, he hears a simple question, “are you Rex?”   
  
He glances down at his hand to see the pink string leading right to this guy, and walks up to him, finally able to see him in detail in front of the car’s headlights.

  
  
  


It’s kind of weird, to be able to see yourself, to not simply look at the flat mirrored image of yourself you’ve become accustomed to. Rex was actually pretty proud at how he looked in person, even if this robo-guy managed to mess up his hair on his way down here.   
  
For Benny, he’s experiencing a different type of weird, he’s looking at this torn up aged version of the shell of a person he used to be. It was much more than just years of neglect, he looked as if someone had tried, but failed to destroy him.

The two stare at each other for a long moment, both enduring their own weird pent up emotions, before Benny spots the blood leaking out of Rex’s (his?) arms.

“Oh crud,” he lifts up Rex’s (his?) arm and Rex tries to step back, but finds himself caught in his own grip. His own inhuman strength was finally catching up to him, “this is bad, we need to switch back before you die in my body.”   
  
Rex thinks ‘ _ easy enough _ ’, and leans up to reach this guy’s mouth. Except, since he has a screen for a face he just sort of ends up booping him right in the face, and they both stare confused at one another for a good moment after that.   
  
“We didn’t switch back,” Rex speaks out his observation.   
  
“Yeah I noticed that,” Benny speaks back looking back to the car, “we probably need to get the screen off, so I can actually kiss you on the mouth.”   
  
“Wait, you have a mouth?” That was a surprise to Rex.   
  
Benny is stumped by that question, pausing to think for a moment  _ if he in fact had a mouth or not, _ “That doesn’t matter, I have a vague amount of human parts in my body that can be kissed. But those vague amounts of human parts can also be hurt, which is how you’re bleeding right now, so we should get moving.”   
  
Rex glances down at his arms that Benny finally lets go, “that, makes a lot of sense. So, are you not a robot?”   
  
Benny sighs as he watches Jenny get back into the car and motion for the two to get in as well, “legally I’m a robot, but I still have a human brain, so I’m really more of a cyborg.”   
  
“Oh cyborgs are dope,” Rex raises his hand to give Benny a high-five over that but Benny just jumps back in surprise as sparks fly out of the hand, “is that normal?”   
  


“Nnnnooope,” Benny gives him that answer as he grabs his sparking hand and drags him into the back seat of the car, telling Jenny to punch it.   
  
Rex gets just a glance at the side of his car before he’s pulled inside and makes an offended noise mumbling out, “my car got scratched up…” And after he mumbles that and watches Jenny start driving away he sits up and asks, “why are you driving my car? You have your own car???”   
  
“Well I always wanted to drive this thing, and I figured this would be my one opportunity for it,” she turns the mirror up at the front of the car to get a better look at him. Benny’s body looked a lot like how she had remembered it, if the one she had remembered had been hit by a few semi trucks and left out on the side of the road for thirty years. Though, it was amazing some of the blue, albeit it had become very dull over the years, still remained painted on.

“That doesn’t give you the right to take my car,” he grumbles, slumping down in his seat, as Benny gives him a supportive pat on the shoulder. He looks over to his soulmate and tries to give a less aggravated face, though not sure if anything would show on the screen for that, “so uh, what’s your name?”

“It’s Benny, Benny Blue Chu.”   
  
Rex holds out his hand to shake and Benny takes it, wincing a bit as a few sparks hit his hand, “Nice to meet you, the name’s Rex Dangervest.”   
  
“Tell him your full name,” Jenny says, trying not to laugh but failing in the front seat, causing Rex to give her seat a kick.   
  
“Full name?” Benny looks over to Jenny, confused as to what she was finding so funny.   
  
“I don’t even know why she’s here-”   
  
“Oh she’s my sister, and I needed help getting to you, and my family doesn’t usually let me drive cause one time I ran over Kenny.”   
  
“Oh that’s a lot of information I don’t know what to do with, but uh, Jenny has a cool robot- I mean cyborg, brother, that’s cool. Yeah who cares, anyways my **_full_ ** name is Rex Machete Ninja Star Dangervest.”

  
“That’s like the coolest name ever,” Benny gives a little smile at that, feeling proud to have such a cool soulmate.   
  
“Thanks I picked it out myself.”

The rest of the car ride back to the apartment occurs uneventfully as the two soulmates try to awkwardly make small talk.   
  
Eventually Jenny does pull into the apartment complex, getting out of the car, before freezing up, “oh fuck I forgot to get them dinner-” And darts to the complex, tossing the keys to Benny who had just managed to step out of the jeep.

  
Benny walks over to Rex’s side of the car and opens the door for the guy as he asks, “what was that about?”

“Oh, she’s probably just worried that the crew might leave the complex and harass people if they don’t get fed in time. Which they won’t, I’ve trained them better than that.”   
  
“The crew?” Benny tilts his head as he asks the question.   
  
Rex who seems to be hitting his robotic legs in a vain attempt to get them out of the car, “I’ll explain that later, can you help me out? Your legs are, not moving at all.”   
  
“Oh, no problem,” Benny swoops down and picks up Rex bridal style, and Rex is thankful he didn’t have a real face at the moment or he might be blushing a bit, “dude how are you so strong?”   
  
“What can I say? I’m just amazing in every possible way.”   
  
Benny kicks the jeep door closed and starts heading back to the apartment, “I mean, I can see that, but Jenny did mention you were undead, does that have anything-”   
  
“I’m not- it’s complicated,” he gets defensive, crossing his arms as he turns his head away from Benny.   
  
“Man, I don’t know if you realize, but I’m apparently some kind of undead cyborg at the moment, I can handle whatever complicated stuff is up with you.”   
  
Rex sighs, trying to make himself less upset at the harmless question as Benny enters his apartment, “I just, don’t super like being called undead. Cause people just assume I’m a mindless zombie, which there’s nothing wrong with zombies, they’re great, but that’s not what I am.”   
  
“Do you know what you are?”   
  
Rex lets out a few small high pitched-beeps at that question, and then him and Benny just stare at each other for a good minute, both not expecting that.

“That was kinda cute man,” Benny comments with a smirk.   
  
“Please just put me down.”   
  
Benny obliges by dropping Rex onto the ground. And then proceeds to give Rex a little nudge with his foot.   
  
“This isn’t what I meant.”

“I know, but you were kind of being an asshole.”

“I WAS-” Rex's voice cuts off and turns to a static mess making the rest of his yelling incomprehensible as Benny stares down at him with a smirk.    
  
“Looks like someone doesn’t know how to control his cool robot body, pretty lame if you ask me.”

Rex static eventually lowers in volume until it disappears, and he sits himself up, hoping his glaring is apparent through the screen, “can we just get this dumb screen off so we can switch back already?”   
  
Benny stops smirking as he gets serious and his eyes start to wander around the apartment, “sure thing, do you have any power tools in here?”   
  
“They’re in my bedroom, if you-” halfway through that sentence Benny has swooped up Rex back in his arms and is carrying him through a doorway into his room, gently placing him onto the bed as he got a good look around the place.   
  
“Wow, this place is a mess.”   
  
Rex lets out a few more beeps as some sort of equivalent of a groan, before responding, “my place is usually a lot cleaner than this, I have this whole routine down, the last few weeks have just been tough.”   
  
  
Benny gives a little nod, “it’s all good man, I mean back when I had my own place it was way worse than this, I never even had any sort of cleaning routine,” he looks around the room and sees a sturdy looking desk covered in all sort of electronics and wires, and begins to poke through it, “man this stuff is pretty nifty, are you some sort of engineer?”   
  
“Nah, I just like messing around with stuff like that for fun.”   
  
Benny picks up a broken looking robot with some sort of government logo that’s been scratched up, “you mess around with illegal technology for fun?”   
  
Rex gives a shrug, “I mess around with a lot of illegal stuff for fun.”   
  
The ex-astronaut places down the messed up robot and picks up a screwdriver as he heads back over to Rex, “okay hold still, this shouldn’t hurt, because I’m pretty sure I disabled most of the nerves in the body.”   
  
He gets to work as Rex tries not to move around, and soon enough the screen pops off, and Rex’s vision grows dark, “I can’t see.”   
  
“Yeah my eye sockets are plugged into the screen, so that makes sense,” Benny is silent after saying that, taking a long time as he looked at his old face.   
  
Rex sits in the silence for a moment before breaking it, “so like, can we kiss now? I kind of like being me, put a lot of time and money into it.”

“Right,” Benny’s biting his lip as he leans closer, “can I request that you, don’t look at my face after we switch back, I don’t really want you to see it.”   
  
Rex tilts his robotic head as he listens to Benny’s uneasy breathing, “alright, but for the record I won’t judge you for it, I was left rotting in the ground for over five years and came out super messed up from it.”   
  
  
Benny, leaning closer to his robotic body says quietly, “but, you look incredible-”   
  
“I’ve been taking, this medicine,” Rex stops himself trying to figure out a better way to explain himself, “your sister specializes in raising the dead and has been slowly bringing my corpse back to life. And it’s still, not perfect, like she can’t regrow limbs, so I have to deal with prosthetics-”   
  
“Wait which limbs are you missing?”   
  
“My hands, you haven’t noticed?”   
  
Benny looks down to Rex’s hands, they seemed rather normal looking, the most abnormal parts of them were the dark blue nail polish and fingerless gloves on them, “but I was able to feel things with these?”   
  
“Microscopic sensors on them, still waiting to hear back from the patent office on that.”   
  
“Wow,” Benny glances back to Rex, who’s still sitting in the dark, “do you think you could, help me install something like this?”   
  
“Yeah sure, what are soulmates for?”   
  
And with a pang in his chest Benny knows he can’t push this off anymore, and leans in for the kiss.    
  
And then he wakes up in the dark, and hears shuffling and a thud as he assumes Rex had fallen over.   
  
Rex, not expecting the switch back to be so fast, was caught off guard, and saw a glimpse of Benny’s face before he remembered his promise and tried to quickly look away, but moved too fast and fell to the ground, creating the thud Benny had heard.   
  
He doesn’t know what he was assuming was under the screen, but it wasn’t a clean skull with wires sticking out. He does a little gulp as he stands back up, taking a deep breath of air, happy to finally be himself again. He then looks back to his supposed soulmate, and a  twinge of regret   
  


Nope, not today.

He leans down to Benny’s level and picks up the screen, “alright how about you tell me how to put your screen back in champ?   
  
“Oh,” Benny’s voice sounds a lot higher and quiet than how he heard himself, it was cute, “you gotta plug in the cable and then snap it in place and then you should be able to screw it in.”   
  
“Got it,” Rex follows the directions and Benny’s sight comes back online in seconds, a small glitch smiley face appearing on the screen.   
  
And then Benny gets to really see his soulmate for the first time, he raises a hand to rest it against the other’s face. Rex, seems a bit startled by this action, but lets him do it.   
  
He then watches as the smiley face switches to a frown as Benny pulls his hand away, and cyborg starts talking in a way that sounds just heart-breaking, “listen, I know you didn’t ask to have some sort of, broken robot soulmate, and being that you’re, kind of perfect I understand if you would want to sever it-”   
  
“No.”   
  
Rex grabs Benny’s hands and holds onto them as tightly as he can, ignoring the flying sparks traveling to his hands as he looks him dead in the eye as he talks again, “I’m not severing a soulmate bond again.”   
  
“You,” Benny remembers some mention of him being the ‘new’ soulmate before, “let yourself get severed?”   
  
Rex rolls his eyes as he grows to look really annoyed, “yeah back when I was alive the first time, the girl I was paired with didn’t want someone like me as her soulmate. So I agreed with her to sever the bond, and you know spending forever rotting away really made me look back at that decision, and wonder what would have happened if we had left it.”

Benny’s quiet as he looks at his string, his on screen eyes flickering as he studies it, “Rex no offense, but I’m very confused as to who you are. Some semi-alive mechanical genius who has a tragic backstory-”   
  
“It’s not tragic, everyone has a sucky life. But if you want my backstory,” Rex stands up and places his hands on his hips as he looks up heroically, “look no further.”   
  
“Actually I would like my legs to get working more at the moment than that. I can fix them if you give me some of your tools.”   
  
Rex scoops up Benny, chuckling in delight at the return of his strength and places him on his desk, “well you can work on yourself while I give you my backstory.”

And thus Rex jumps into his backstory spiel, omitting a rather large sum of parts, “so in my past life, I started out as pretty unassuming guy, before I fell into an ancient cavern and was chosen to be the Special, a hero foretold by a prophecy to save the world with the Piece of Resistance-”   
  
Benny stops unscrewing a panel on his leg to look over to Rex and speaks out, “the Piece of Resistance? You mean the ancient relic meant to seal away the Kragle?”   
  
“You know about that?”   
  
“Yeah I had to look into relics, after an accident. They’re powerful and dangerous bio-hazardous items that leaked in from the Realm of the Man Upstairs. And since they’re from that realm they fuck with people if they’re in close contact with them for too long.”   
  
“Yeah well the Piece of Resistance fused to my back-”   
  
Benny’s face glitches for a moment before displaying a question mark, “is that what killed you?”   
  
“Oh no, I died from driving after my friends in a futile effort to save them and ended up getting hit by a semi. Always wear your seatbelt, or you’ll have to have a closed casket funeral.”   
  
“Geeze man.”   
  
“Yeah, sucky life made me into the cool person I am today so it’s fine. But back to my incredible backstory, so the Piece of Resistance gave me some powers, mainly the ability to see into the future, which doesn’t help a lot in the battle, so when I teamed up with other magical beings to fight against a totally lame evil dude bent on destroying all magic and also end the world maybe, it’s been awhile I don’t remember all the details, the main thing I remember is the other magical beings on my team acted like I was more of a hindrance than a help.”   
  
“But don’t you have super strength? Shouldn’t that have helped with the battles?”

“I didn’t get my super-human abilities until I spent like ten years in the Realm of the Man Upstairs.”   
  
“WHAT,” Benny closes a panel on his leg, as his screen flashes a series of bright and annoying colors, “you went into that realm??? And lived??? No wonder you got so fucked up.”   
  
“I’m not fucked up, and yeah I was trapped between worlds after I died-”   
  
“But I thought you said you rotted away for five years?”   
  
“Time passes differently in the other realm, everything stretched out longer, and it really sucks.”   
  
“Oh okay, well you can continue your backstory now.”   
  
“Well you kind of got most of it, one day I was finally able to break fully back into this world. I dug my way out of the grave, a bloody mess. After roaming around the graveyard confused out of my mind your sister found me, brought me back here, I found out I can control zombies and other undead creatures, and then I tried to blow up the city. Jump forward a few monthI started work as a part time model, script doctor, and maybe I starred in a few movies that are all delayed. But right now I’m looking to move out of show business, as I have finally finished getting my Masters in Archeology, with a minor in Paleontology.”   
  
Benny’s face slowly flashes between colors as he finishes working on his leg, “did you say you almost blew up the city?”   
  
“Yeah, I was going through this, um, what did my therapist call it,” Rex does some quotation marks around the next part he says, “ ‘super villain’ phase, completely over that now.”

  
As Benny tries to figure out how to process that he hears a noise from outside the room, and soon Jenny is standing in the doorway, wearing a white shirt with dark gray jeans covered in blood, “Rex I think the crew missed you today.”   
  
Benny panicking, jumps on his newly fixed legs and wobbles over to Jenny, looking over her for any wounds, “Jen!! Are you okay, did you like- get shot or something?”   
  
She lets out a laugh as she shakes her head, “no, I had to grab a spare cow carcass for the crew to eat, ending up getting some of the blood on me.”   
  
Benny looks back to Rex, “what’s the crew.”   
  
“Oh the ‘crew’ is a pack of zombies that Jenny keeps in the apartment. But since I can actually talk to them, and also give them commands, I’m more of their unofficial leader, we usually just say crew cause saying ‘zombies’ in public freak people out.”   
  
Rex focuses back on Benny, “so I gave you my backstory, how about you explain yourself, mysterious cyborg man?”   
  
Benny gives a shrug as he walks out of the room to go take a seat on Rex’s couch, wanting to look at some more of the apartment, “it’s complicated.”   
  
Rex follows behind as Jenny stands in the doorway in his bedroom to call out, “no it’s not!! He stuffed himself into a robot to sneak into space.”   
  
Rex looks over to Benny with raised eyebrows, apparently rather intrigued by that claim, “okay that does sound pretty tight, you gotta explain that.”   
  
Benny lets out a few beeps to signify a sigh before going, “alright, so it began in space.”   



	4. Electric Desires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Start of Act 2, containing chapters 4 & 5 & 6 & 7
> 
> Benny’s backstory will be explored in chapters 4 & 5\. This is a long chapter, about 10,000 words, turns out I really like writing about fictional astronauts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Benny Blue Chu - (Later on in the chapter he’s called Blue) Currently the youngest astronaut to go into space, though if Lenny gets up there soon he’ll break his record. Builds lots of cool robots for Classic Space.
> 
> Lenny Pink Ink - a year younger than Benny and Classic Space’s rising star, he’s making himself well known in the aerospace organization. He also has some robotic knowledge under his belt, but not as much as Benny has. Also, as of the start of the flashback in 1978 he’s dating Benny, they’re not soulmates with one another, but Lenny is already willing to live the rest of his life with Benny, he just hasn’t found the right words to tell Blue Chu that. He also hopes to go to space soon.
> 
> Denny - Benny’s eldest sibling, very protective over both their siblings. Some might mistake them as being the rational one of the space squad, but they’re just better at pretending to have everything under control than the others.
> 
> K. Willson (later legally known as Kenny Yellow Donatello) - Denny’s soulmate who is in charge of scientific research on space missions. He’s usually just here to have fun, really likes the ninja turtles.
> 
> Jenny - Benny’s older sister and Denny’s young sister. A bit more reckless than the other space squad members, and can’t handle emotionally heavy situations at all without breaking apart.
> 
> Penny BlackJack - honorary Space Squad member. She’s really bad at connecting with other people but hates being alone so she tries a little to be tolerable. Jenny’s soulmate. She wants to be important.

**[SPACE, AUGUST 3rd, 1978]**

A small crew aboard a rocket was just about to finish their orbit around the moon and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. Though an error light indicating something was wrong with an outside panel had not left a lot of time for the crew to focus on their return back to Earth.

  
“We just need someone to go outside and re-adjust the panel,” Benny, the youngest astronaut aboard the ship, says, grabbing his helmet as he prepares for the quick space walk.

The other three astronauts looked to one another, knowing this had to be done, but, “you’ve seen the debris around the ship since we started the orbit,” Denny is the one who speaks out, grabbing Benny’s shoulder to stop him from moving forward, “it’s too dangerous to go out now.”

“And what are we supposed to do? Wait around for the debris to disappear while we slowly lose all our oxygen?”   
  
“Benny as your Commander I refuse to let you go outside.”   
  
“Yeah well you can suck it broski.” 

And while Denny had been arguing with the young astronaut, the guy had managed to walk backwards right into the airlock, slamming the exit button as he connected to the oxygen supply hose.

Kenny and Jenny rush to their side of the door to try and override it, but they were too late, Benny was already out.

Denny sighs as they look over to the other two panicking crew mates, "Kenny prepare to do some emergency medical care in case something happens, Jenny I need you to watch the controls as-"

The three are cut off guard as another alarm goes off.

Outside the ship Benny quickly takes out his tools and fixes the panel, assuring a safe landing for his crew, but alas, as he goes to return through the airlock, something flies straight at him, knocking him back. He can hear a loud crunch and suddenly it gets a lot harder to breath. He raises his hands to his throat as he gasps for air, but before he can react a second more, everything fades to black.

_ When recounting this tale to others years later they would always say he had been stuck without oxygen for two minutes and six seconds. But he swears he felt like he was left alone in space for hours before he was pulled back into the spaceship. _

So  _ what seemed like hours passed _ before Benny felt himself pulled back inside. He heard shouting once he was safe, something about blood, and once his helmet was taken off he could see the glass broken in it.    
  
His vision was growing blurry as he gave the distraught crew a thumbs up mumbling, “told ya I could do it,” before passing out.   
  


**[UNDISCLOSED HOSPITAL, OCTOBER 21th, 1978]**

Waking up alone in a hospital usually sucks, but laying, staring at the ceiling and remembering the dumb thing that landed you in there sucks almost as much.

Though as soon as a nurse is alerted he’s awake, there’s a lot of phone calls and forms being thrusted at him, and before he’s halfway through his paperwork, there’s the sound of someone running down the hall, and soon enough Benny sees his boyfriend standing in the doorway, panting as he tries to catch his breath. 

Benny gives a weak smile to him, raising his hand to give a small wave.   
  
And Lenny walks over giving him a tight hug, and Benny gets a good look to see how exhausted he was.

“You had everyone scared sick.”   
  
Benny gives a small laugh, hugging Lenny back, “ah well, at least they were alive to worry.”

Lenny pulls back from the hug, looking pretty serious as he spoke, “Benny, you’re in like, a super amount of trouble with Classic Space.”   
  
Benny gives a laugh at that, “c’mon, I’m like the most important person on the payroll, what can they do to me?”   
  
  


**[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, OCTOBER 27th, 1978]**

“You’re firing me!?”

A rather important looking man in a polo and tie sighs as he rubs his temples, “Listen Mr. Chu, you have to understand even if we were to ignore your break of protocol and disobedience to your Commander, you’re no longer physically fit enough to space travel.”   
  
The rest of his squad quietly stands behind him, looking at the ground, seeming to fully agree with this guy, either that or too cowardly to speak out in defense of their friend.

“Unfit? I was out there for two minutes, I hold my breath longer than that when I go to the beach this-”   
  
“Mr. Chu, were you not aware that the debris broke through your helmet? And the debris was labeled as a bio-hazardous item?”   
  
Benny stands there blinking in confusion, as he was unaware of this. Lenny looks at the other three standing beside them with a puzzled expression, apparently not told of this either.   
  
“So, run some tests on me, see that I’m fine! You guys need me in space, I’m the only one who knows how to operate my mechanical creations!” Benny’s voice was rising to more of a shout now, as he could feel his livelihood begin to slip out of his hands.   
  
“Well that was a concern, until, during the two months you were unconscious, Leonard proved to be exceptionally prepared to handle your robotics.”   
  
“B-But, you guys need me to still design them, you’re not going to give up the only guy who can design these machines and lose your edge-”   
  
“Mr. Chu please, remain professional,” the man waved his hand dismissing Benny’s desperate pleas, “while you’re being let go from your current position, Classic Space will still seek you out for contracted work. Think of it this way, your creations will still go to space, so in essence you will too, now that was all for today, you’ll find everything of yours from the robotics lab has been moved out, you have a day to pick up the boxes of your possessions before they’re thrown out. Good day.”   
  
And without waiting for a response, the guy leaves the room. Leaving Benny crying in front of his so called friends.   
  
Lenny is the first to try and approach him, only for Benny to slap away the hand being offered to him, and angrily shout, “Did you know about this? Did ANY of you know they were going to fire me?!”

The group does a collective sigh, “they said it was the best for your health,” Denny tries to start to explain, but is cut off by Benny groaning.   
  
“Oh that is BS, you’re all terrible!”   
  
“Benny you’re being emotional-” Lenny raises his voice, his hands shaking as he tries to not escalate things too far.

“Oh screw off, Mr. Steal My Boyfriends Job-”   
  
“I didn’t know they were going to offer me that position-”   
  
“Jokes on me though, I guess I shouldn’t have explained my schematics to you, you were just waiting to steal position right from right under me.”   
  
“Benny you know that’s not true,” there’s pain in Lenny’s voice now, wanting, no needing, Benny to know he would never hurt him.   
  
“Do I? Cause all I really know right now is my one dream, the one thing I ever wanted and worked my whole life for was taken from me, and you guys get to leave this situation scot-free, IT’S NOT FAIR.”   
  
Denny is the one who steps in as Lenny tries his hardest to not break into tears, and Kenny and Jenny stand back silenced by their guilt, “Benny that’s enough.”   
  
“You’re enough,” Benny mumbles under his breath, crossing his arms as he rolls his eyes, figuring there was nothing else he could do now, so he storms out of the room.

  
  


**[BRICKSBURG SUBURBS, DECEMBER 2nd, 1978]**

In a small two room house, a lone ex-astronaut lays on his couch, scooping out ice cream straight out of the container as he watched commercials for new Star War toys.   
  
He doesn’t move a muscle as he hears someone kick his front door.   
  
He does react when he hears an unexpected voice at his door, “Jen you can’t keep kicking doors the rest of your life.”   
  
The door opens and two people walk in, Benny’s sister, who he was expecting, and her soulmate who had apparently tagged along for her babysitting duty, “I can and I will, and that’s a threat.”   
  
Penny snorts as she gives a cheerful wave over to Benny, leaving Jenny to carry in the rest of the groceries, “what’s hanging, my favorite sibling of Jenny’s?”   
  
Benny finally sits up and rubs his eyes, “what makes me a higher ranking than Denny?”   
  
“Denny reported me to my supervisor for breaking into the vault.”   
  
“The vault where they keep priceless and important historical items related to the space missions? That vault?” Benny asked for clarity, even though he didn’t need it.   
  
“That’s the one,” Jenny yells from the kitchen, moving the groceries into the fridge, “Penny was playing it off that she wanted to make sure everything was catalogued from a mission a few years ago.”   
  
“As a mission analyst it was a good cover.”   
  
“Cover?” Benny raises an eyebrow at Penny, “what was the real reason for your break-in?”   
  
“This,” Penny pulls out a small plastic bag containing what looked like a banged up little toy spaceship.   
  
“Why was that in the vault?”   
  
“Because it lodged itself in some idiot’s head.”   
  
Jenny walks back over from the kitchen and smacks Penny on the head for that.   
  
Benny squints for a moment before grabbing the item from Penny, “wait is this the thing that got me fired? It’s just a stupid toy!”   
  
“Benny, don’t you notice it’s an exact replica of our ship?” Jenny points out.   
  
Benny turns over the little ship in his hands, eyes widening a bit as he realizes this, “okay, now I’m lost, is this some sort of joke? What’s going on here?”   
  
“I think you got hit in the head by a relic!” Jenny says excitedly.

“A what now?”   
  
“Magical items from the realm of the Man Upstairs, it would explain the mild levels of radiation on the item.”   
  
“You didn’t tell me this thing was radioactive,” Penny says, becoming rather concerned as she looks over to the item in Benny’s hand.   
  
“It can, like, only hurt you if you make physical contact with it, so you’re fine.”

Benny holds up the spaceship close to his face, noticing the broken panel still appeared on the mini replica, he also noticed some blood on it, hopefully it was his.   
  
“So what, the Man Upstairs threw a toy spaceship at me? To get me fired?”   
  
Penny, still eyeing the relic cautiously shakes her head in disagreement, “c’mon the Man Upstairs doesn’t have plans for us, everything that happens is usually just an accident on his part.”   
  
Jenny lets out a little cough at that, “Penny, what about the whole soulmate thing? He picks out two soulmates and matches them up.”   
  
“Oh don’t tell me you believe that bs,” Penny looks to see her girlfriend glaring with fire that could burn her skin so she lets out a laugh, “I mean, soulmates are just matched between two people who are completely compatible, that’s all the science behind it, it’s not like we were born to get together, you agree with me, right Benny?”   
  
“Nope, not getting involved in one of your guy’s fights again.”   
  
“Smart move Benny,” Jenny looks outside to the car, remembering she left the keys in, “ah dip, I’ll be right back.”   
  
Penny waves to Jenny as she runs out the door before leaning back on the couch, “so how’s working at home been going for you man?”   
  
“It freaking sucks, all I can think about is how I’ll never get to go to space again. It’s like, I don’t know how to explain it, it just feels like my brain is a mess of tangled wires right now, and it’s killing me.”   
  
“You sure that isn’t a side effect from the brain surgery, Einstein?”   
  
“Bite me,” Benny sticks out his tongue at her, finally growing bored of the toy and placing it on the coffee table in front of him.   
  
“That’s called cannibalism and while not explicitly illegal is frowned upon in this great country of ours, so do you have any plans for upcoming robots?”   
  
“Yeah I’m making one that tells people to go fuck themselves,” Benny says as he chooses to focus on his sci-fi show that was coming back on rather than talk to Penny.

“Oh that’s hilarious, but if you want my advice-”   
  
“I really don’t.”   
  
“You should make like some cybernetic enhancement stuff.”   
  
“What,” Benny was caught off guard by that suggestion, giving Penny his full undivided attention now.   
  
“Oh you know cyborg stuff, I’ve been shooting these ideas to Lenny but he keeps denying them on account that the testing for this stuff might be too inhumane. But think about it, the human mind can store so much more memory than a computer, what would take an entire warehouse of computers to store information could be condensed into one skull!”   
  
“That, might be true,” part of Benny can’t believe he’s humoring this idea, the other part is going  _ ‘damn is this possible?’ _   
  
“And so I was thinking, since you’re like the smartest guy in robotics, light-years beyond any other scientist on the planet-”   
  
“Light-years measure distance not time.”   
  
“Yeah whatever, but you could be responsible for making the most advanced robot the world has ever seen wouldn’t that be-”   
  
“I’m back,” Jenny walks through the door and instantly Penny shuts up, as if this wasn’t something she wanted to bring up around Jenny.   
  
Benny catches onto that and looks over to Jenny, noticing she’s carrying a lot of books, “whatcha got there space cadet?”   
  
“Oh, so like when I found out it was a relic that hit you in space earlier today I went to the library and picked up all the books on relics I could for you, so you could research the known side effects in case it’s causing you any problems.”   
  
“Oh, that’s actually nice of you, makes it feel more like you were just dropping by to give me books instead of stopping by to make sure I was still alive.”   
  
“Bro,” she gives him a heartfelt look but he rolls his eyes as he stands to go take the books from her.   
  
“I know you and Denny are worried about me, but I’m fine really, I don’t need you guys breathing down my neck all the time, just have some trust in me.”   
  
Jenny sighs as she hands the books over Benny and takes Penny’s hand as she gets ready to leave, “alright, I trust you.”

  
  
  


**[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, JANUARY 6th, 1980]**

Over the last two years Benny Blue Chu had been sending in model after model of perfect robot specisms to help advance space exploration to unbelievable heights. 

  
And today, his grandest creation, one he claims will last in terms of its durability, artificial intelligence, and overall strength, until the end of time, is set to arrive.

  
  
  


“I really have a bad feeling,” Lenny looks apprehensively as he pokes around the food on his plate, the cafeteria mostly empty by this time of day, leaving him to talk to his friend without too many eavesdroppers.

“C’mon, I knew Benny has been going through a rough patch the last couple of years but like, he’s been getting better,” Kenny, donned in his yellow colored suit, (probably cause he had some simulator training later today), pats his friend on their shoulder, trying to be supportive, “I mean look at the robots he’s been creating! I think Classic Space now has the most advanced artificial intelligences created on Earth thanks to him!”   
  
“The tiny robot assistants he’s made are pretty helpful,” Lenny gives a slight smile, trying to make himself believe Kenny, “and with whatever the Basic Level Unit is supposed to be, it’s going to be something that’s ‘ground-breaking’ according to him.”   
  
“Oh yeah that thing got delivered this morning, have you got to see it yet?”   
  
“I’m scheduled to look over it tomorrow to see if it’s okay for space travel,” Lenny starts to look a little apprehensive thinking about this machine, “you don’t think Benny gets, like jealous his creations go to space and he doesn’t?”   
  
Kenny gives a shrug, “why don’t you just ask him if it does?”   
  
Lenny bites his lip looking towards the exit of the cafeteria, “we haven’t been communicating well lately… Our relationship isn’t like yours and Denny’s, there’s things I know he’s been hiding from me, and I don’t know what. We’ve been drifting apart since he got fired and he won’t let me help him, maybe if we were soulmates he would trust me-”   
  
Kenny cuts him off by standing up and pointing at him as he starts to talk in an authoritative tone, “Lenny Pink Ink, your love is just as valid as anyone else's, you don’t need some string to tell you your love matters!”   
  
“Dude, you’re making a scene.”   
  
“No, I’m making you valid, and you- oh hey Denny.”   
  
Denny, wearing a matching astronaut suit to Kenny, although in red, walks over to the table, taking notice of Lenny burying his face in his hands, “Kenny, are you embarrassing Lenny again?”   
  
“I’m being encouraging!”   
  
“Well you can encourage Lenny after the test, we need to get going.”   
  
Kenny gives a wave to Lenny as he picks up his food tray, “catch ya on the flip Lenny-boy.”   
  
Before Lenny can say ‘don’t call me that,’ his friends are already walking out of the cafeteria, leaving him to finish his food in silence.

  
  
  


Lenny finally makes his way back to the robotics lab, surprised to catch his colleagues surrounding a table, eagerly chattering away…. To something.   
  
He pushes his way past the other engineers and gets a glimpse of the new robot sitting on the table.   
  
It’s….. an interesting machine, definitely of Benny’s design. A humanoid figure, two thick arms made of a shiny and reflective copper, whereas the rest of the body is a dark blue color with some copper accents on it. The head was definitely the most eye-catching part, it almost looked like an astronaut’s helmet, though where the glass visor should be there was an electronic screen the robot was using to display various images.

Lenny continues to observe silently for a moment as he watches the other scientists throw all sorts of trivia questions at the robot, to which it answers almost immediately.

One person asks, “how far away is the moon?” Another chimes in, “what’s the square root of 1227?” And a third speaks out, “do you know VTR stands for?”

“384,400 km, 35 point zero three rounded to the nearest decimal, and it stands for Video Tape Recorder.”

“How do you know all that?” Lenny asks, causing all the eyes in the room to turn to him.

The bot is quiet for a few ticks longer than it was when answering the other trivia questions, like seeing Lenny was pushing extra consumption of it’s processor. Though it does break the silence and the screen shows two lines and half a curve, like it’s trying to make a smiley face.

“Why, I was programmed with several built in calculators and the information from several recent science encyclopedias was manually put into my hard drive! Technology is amazing.”

The crowd murmurs in excitement and Lenny ignores their enthusiasm as lets out a cough to get their attention, “this robot is not a toy, now if you don’t all mine I would like to take him in for some tests.”

Sure it was a day earlier than he participated, but he got a real bad feeling deep in his stomach the more he looked at this machine.

The crowd mumbles with displeasure at having the activities ended, but disperse without any problems, leaving Lenny alone with the robot.

“Greetings, I am the Basic Level Unit Third-Gear Robotic System! BLU3-BOT for short!”

Lenny turned his back to the robot for a moment as he went to grab a clipboard and some paper, “you know Benny’s never made a robot quite this talkative before.”

The robot is silent for a few seconds, just like it was at Lenny’s last question before it’s able to respond, “my creator wanted me to be an interactive experience with unlimited potential to help the Classic Space organization!”

Lenny nudges the screen of the BLU3-BOT with his pencil, raising an eyebrow at that comment, “say, what do you know about your creator?”

This question garnered an instant response, “Benny Chu was a robotic engineer who worked with Classic Space to make many one of a kind technologies.”

“Was?”

The smile on the robot’s face flashes away a moment before returning, “my apologies, while I do have several dictionaries programmed in, I don’t have the same information saved about proper grammar. Though I am programmed to learn and adapt over time so hopefully I can learn to create properly structured sentences.”

Lenny bites his lip as he writes something down, an uneasy feeling bubbling up inside him, “alright then, now we should head into building 7A to see how you perform under high pressured situations.”

“Wuuh?”

“You needed to be tested to see how you would behave in space-“ Lenny cuts himself to give a ‘wtf’ look over to the robot, “why would a robot be programmed to say wuuh?”

“Uuuuuh my creator wanted me to be cute?” BLU3-BOT gives a little shrug.

“Robots wouldn’t need to say uh.”

“It’s programmed in to fill in space while I load the correct response.”

Lenny squints at the robot, the uneasy feeling blossoming into a fear, but he doesn’t want to deal with this today, so he sighs and starts heading out the door, “yeah whatever, c’mon we need to get to the tests.”

“Right away sir!” The bot jumps up and runs after him, and Lenny could feel the feeling die down a bit watching the cute robot struggle to keep up with his pace. Benny probably just made a funny lil robot, the guy is probably back at home watching TV and having a good time. That at least, was what Lenny kept telling himself.

**[REDACTED, MARCH 4th, 1980]**

A reporter is shown on an old blocky TV. She’s standing in front of a partly destroyed familiar looking house.

Some text scrolls by about how a local retired astronaut had been caught in an explosion, it seems the news was reporting that he died.

There would be an announcement at Classic Space that morning mentioning the loss of a Benny Blue Chu. There would be murmurs going around as people spread rumors about how it must have been Blacktron that pulled it off. That the organization was jealous that Classic Space was so much more advanced than them.

And then there would be the space squad, Jenny and Denny would spend the day receiving condolences. And Kenny was trying to be supportive to Lenny, but Lenny didn’t seem all that sad. People were shrugging it off as ‘everyone mourns differently’. But he wasn’t mourning, he was too pissed off to mourn. And you know, you don’t need to mourn someone who faked their death.

Like c’mon, how was no one else seeing this? Sure his place was covered in his blood and they found a few organs, but who doesn’t leave behind at least a few bones? And this explosion happening so soon after the suspicious humanoid robot arrived? Nope, Lenny wasn’t having any of this, and as soon as he calmed down enough to the point he wasn’t going to punch the robot-person-thing he was going to confront him.

**[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, MARCH 12th, 1980]**

BLU3-BOT was helping with the preparations for the upcoming flight, and most of the staff loved how excited the robot seemed about it. They also really liked the robot now took care of 60% of the company’s busywork, the machine could take care of days worth of paperwork in less than a hour, and theoretical calculations and simulations never ran faster.

So when Lenny requested to have the bot for a few hours there was some argument, but his emphasis on the importance of running more tests to make sure the bot was fully capable for space flight won out as the most important use of the bot’s time.

The astronaut drags the ‘robot’ to the newly installed computer rooms. The place got so hot no one ever really hung out in there long. Making it the perfect place for someone to yell at their significant other.

BLU3-BOT looks around the room, appearing nervous, like he was aware that this place was perfect to be yelled at in.

“So,” Lenny starts off this little meeting with a serious face as he leans against one of the towering machines behind him, “your creator died recently. How does that make you feel?”

“I am not programmed to truly feel emotions, but I can act sad if it makes others feel more comfortable-“

“Benny shut the hell up.”

The robot makes a glitching sound at that, and the screen on him switches off, “whaaaaa-“ the voice skips for 10 seconds before he seems to get control of himself again, “who is Benny?”

Lenny steps closer pointing a finger onto the logo painted onto the bot, “I’m not playing this game anymore, if you don’t want me to cut you in half right now you better explain yourself.”

“I’m- I’m- I don’t understand your request. I am the Basic Level Unit, I am here to help. If you cut me open there will be blood.”

Lenny takes his finger back, thrown off by the last of that sentence, “was that a threat?”

“No. I don’t understand what you’re asking, I am not capable of causing any intentional harm to any living creature unless they give me a reason to harm them. It would be my blood.”

“Wait so you are-“ Lenny is cut off by a group entering the room.

“Yeah we should be safe to talk about Benny in here-“ Denny makes a loud coughing noise upon seeing Lenny and BLU3-BOT standing relatively close to one another.

Kenny leans over to Jenny and whispers, “do you think they were making out in here?”

“Damn Lenny is into necrophilia,” Penny snorts out, before getting a punch on the shoulder by Jenny.

“Dude not funny, plus he’s not like a corpse in the robot, right?”

“Oh no, I’m very much a corpse in here,” BLU3 speaks out, causing Lenny to just start rubbing his temples as he feels a headache come on.

“Oh my god,” Denny whispers under their breath, “Ben what the hell!?”

“Well I wanted to go back to space. And none of you were helping me get back there so I took matters into my own hands.”

“Taking matters into your own hands includes stuffing your body into this metal can???” Lenny shouts, looking like he’s about to throttle his boyfriend at the moment.

“I didn’t stuff my body into this thing. It was a much more intricate process of having my robots cut me open and put all my insides into the machine.”

The rest of the squad looks like they’re about to throw up at that comment but Lenny keeps pressing, “that’s so stupidly dangerous, and what’s with this? You just suddenly stop pretending to buffer?”

“I wasn’t pretending, I think Denny walking on turned off my auto-filter.”

“Auto what?”

“Well I hooked up a bunch of mother boards to my brain. So like the code contained in them goes through my brain before I can act. But, I think it got disabled for the moment?”

“Well, that’s weird,” Lenny thinks about that for a moment, the image of Benny’s brain being hooked up to thousands of wires and his stomach turns over, his anger quickly returning, “why would you throw away your life like this?”

“I lost the life I wanted when I got fired this is me getting it back!”

“No this is you becoming some kind of abomination! And what’s stopping me from going and telling everyone in Classic Space the truth about you?”

BLU3 lets out a little glitch like noise, that almost sounds like a laugh, “well for starters they would break me open if they were to believe you, which would kill me, and after my death you, and everyone else here would be held responsible for some level of culpability of my said death, which would probably suck for your careers,” after saying this he leans to Lenny pointing a finger on his chest, “now that time, it was a threat.”   
  
The rest of the squad is looking at BLU3 terrified, well except for Penny, she looks amused by this whole situation.   
  
“I can’t believe I ever loved you,” Lenny says, bitterness and heartbreak dripping out of his voice. He says it in such a harsh tone it causes BLU3 to back up, and his screen started to flash colors as the robot remained silent, “but you’re just awful. You won’t have to worry about me selling you out, because I no longer care about what happens to you in the slightest. Have fun pretending to be a robot for the rest of your life,” and Lenny storms out after that, leaving the terrified space squad in the room alone with BLU3 after that.   
  
  
**[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, APRIL 20th, 1982]**

Two years have passed since BLU3-BOT arrived. Most of the staff continues to adore the machine, even switching to referring to him with a playful nickname of “Blue”. Though there is one group of individuals who have been reported to be less than accepting of the new machine. Their coldness to the machine has been chalked up as some sort of association between the creation and it’s dead creator.

It was getting late tonight, and Blue was in charge of shutting down and running security measures on the whole complex. But it seems he was a little distracted.

“Yooo Blue let’s go already!” Penny, an honorary member of the ‘space squad’ had finished tying an office chair to some kind of spinning machine used to gauge potential astronaut’s reactions to high level g-forces.   
  
“Starting it now, hold on!”    
  
Not too far from her, the robot starts the machine, and it goes well for about twenty seconds before the rope breaks and she’s sent flying into the wall. From her laughs she seems to be fine, so no worries on Blue’s conscience there.

The fun is brought to an end relatively soon, as an actual member of the space squad walks in calling out, “Penny are you in here? I saw your car still in the parking lot and-”   
  
She looks to see Penny walking away from a destroyed chair and Blue picking up pieces of the debris, “oh.”   
  
“S’up babe-roni!” Penny gives a peace sign as she approaches her girlfriend.   
  
But Jenny’s eyes are focused on Blue in the distance, “Penny, what were you doing?”   
  
“Just having some fun with Blue over there, the guy doesn’t have a lot of friends you know.”   
  
“We talked about this, I don’t like you treating him like this, if someone found he was human they would-”   
  
“Think he’s a really smart AI, Jen no one here gives a flying dip over him. Plus I’m really sneaky, like seriously I would make a great spy, I already had all the cameras disabled in this room.”   
  
“She did disable the cameras!” Blue yells struggling to pick up all the debris, “it was very considerate of her.”   
  
Jenny’s shoulder slumps as she feels herself losing this conversation, “fine, you guys got away with it this time, but you seriously need to be more careful.” She loved her soulmate, and she didn’t want to see her brother thrown into a trash compactor, but they just kept jeopardizing his existence and she didn’t know how much longer she could take it.

“Well Jen, have you ever considered you might need to take a chill-pill and start treating Blue nicer?” Penny asks, picking up her jacket as she heads to the door.   
  
“I treat him,” Jenny pauses herself, thinking back over how the last couple of years she’s been keeping her distance from her. She kept telling herself it was to protect him, but the poor guy was already suffering unimaginable isolation by being treated as a thoughtless machine by everyone. He didn’t need her keeping him away at arm’s length. So she walks over and gives Blue a hug.   
  
His screen switches to a question mark, really not expecting this outcome, but quickly hugs back. It had been so long since he had gotten a hug, and he really liked them.

“Benny I still don’t forgive you for doing this to yourself, but you’ll always be my brother,” she pulls herself back, still placing her hands squarely on his shoulders as she looks down to him, “and I’m still here for you. I do have a thirteen page paper on an emergency evacuation plan for you in case anyone ever finds out the truth about you.”   
  
“Aww, that’s sweet.”   
  
“And I’ve dwindled down the plan to a minimum of 4 casualties,” Penny chimes in, to which Jenny rolls her eyes at.   
  
“There’s no casualties on the plan.”   
  
“You say that now, but in the thick of it and we’re under fire, Kenny’s going to get some stray bullets in him one way or another.”   
  
“Why is it always Kenny that gets shot in your scenarios,” Jenny asks squinting at her soulmate.   
  
Penny shrugs, “I just don’t trust a guy who eats mac n cheese right out of the box, he’s got a dark secret and we should take him out sooner than later.”   
  
Blue lets out a few glitched up laughs as the two bicker on, and helps them to their car, waving them farewell before returning to checking the perimeter.

He could feel a warm emotion building up in his chest, one he hadn’t felt in a long time. If he could break through to Jenny and get her to treat him like a person, maybe there was hope for the others. Maybe there was hope he could one day patch things up with Lenny.

  
  
  


**[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, FEBRUARY 19th, 1984]**

“Thanks for helping me out with this.”   
  
Blue tilts his head as he finishes tightening the pipes underneath a lab table, not sure what his yellow suited friend meant, “I exist to help every employee here at Classic Space, there is no need to thank me.”   
  
Kenny gives him a friendly punch on the shoulder, “c’mon can’t I be chill with my homeboy.”   
  
Blue could feel some of his robotic restrictions fall away with that comment and mimics and eye roll with the pixels on his screen, “you go overboard with the slang man.”   
  
“What, is it a crime to stay hip with the kids?”   
  
Blue quickly pulls up a pixelated picture of a police car on his screen before replying, “yes it is, now prepared to be arrested.”   
  
“Aww man, pretty un-gnarly of you bruh,” Kenny laughs out. And with that he looks around the room and clasps his hands together, “well it looks like we’re done setting this place up!”   
  
Blue does a scan around switching his appearance to his default happy face, proud of the setup, “it’s really cool you guys all got some sweet promotions.”   
  
“Yeah, we all have our own choice offices from it, though Lenny’s got the biggest one. I think the higher ups want to give him an executive position when one opens up.”   
  
“Heh, well if anyone deserves it, it’s him.”   
  
Kenny heads to the door, looking down at the handle, “well I mean, if anyone deserves it I would think it would be you, you really, gave everything to this job…” He’s staring with a tired expression on his face, but quickly jumps back to his relaxed and cheerful self, “well I gotta get going, got some important and not illegal stuff to do tonight.”   
  
“Are you going to do drugs?”   
  
Kenny waves his hand at that letting out a laugh, “c’mon you know Denny wouldn’t let me do drugs. I can’t even drink after I fell off the boat and got lost at sea for a week. I mean it happens one time, and they’ve been holding it over my head ever since. Anyways, since most of the staff has off tomorrow for Presidents Day, I was thinking I could bring in my rental copy of A New Hope,” he pauses for a second glancing over to the security camera in the room, “and I was hoping someone or something could watch it to make sure the VHS player we set up in here is installed correctly.”   
  
Blue lets out a small glitch sound indicating a chuckle, “No one has me scheduled out for tomorrow from 7-8PM so that sounds ‘gnarly’ as you say.”   
  
Kenny’s smile falters as he hears Blue’s speech pattern fall back into his more restricted mode, “right, well I gotta be going.”   
  
And then Kenny heads out, leaving Blue to rub the side of his arm, wondering if he hurt Kenny’s feelings. He thought the gnarly thing was kind of funny… While things were getting better with his friends he had to keep reminding himself, they still don’t fully see him like they used to, it was really easy to just think of him as a mindless machine.

Blue is left there feeling sad for a bit until he’s surprised by a door opening, quickly blurting out his preprogrammed greeting, “Hello, how may I help-”   
  
He stops before finishing realizing Denny had walked in, and his heart starts beeping at a more rapid pace, he and Denny, were not on what he would call ‘hang out terms’. They were more on ‘Denny refuses to make eye contact with him’ terms for the last few years, and when Denny did need to address him, they would give very direct and cold commands. He means, sure there were the rare instances where he would say a small joke and he could hear Denny give a small chuckle, but those little quiet moments where things felt back to normal were few and far between.

But here was Denny, closing the door directly behind them, glaring Blue right into his screen.   
  


“Hey Denzz, how may I assist you?”

But Denny just continues to glare at Blue before saying, “Basic Leveling Unity, activate sleep mode.”

And then Blue freezes before falling to his knees. His whole ‘built-in shut off in case he lost control of his body’ feature was important, but it wasn’t supposed to be used like this. 

And probably the worst part of this feature was that he was completely aware of everything going on around him when he was like this, but had no way to wake himself up. Being frozen in fear unable to move or scream for help could anyone relate to that-

  
  


**[BRICKSBURG METROPOLITAN AREA, SEPTEMBER X, 202X]**

“I mean I can, and you know anyone who suffers dream paralysis,” Rex gives a shrug, ignoring the glare from Jenny who didn’t like the fact he had interrupted her brother.

“Oh uh, you can relate to that?” Benny is caught off guard by that comment forgetting he was an hour and a half into his tragic backstory.

“Yeah man, trapped in my grave for who knows how long-”   
  
“It was five years, you were frozen for five years, you just mentioned it earlier,” Jenny points out.   
  
“Oh yeah he did bring that up,” Benny tilts his head as his pixelated display of his eyes flicker, “were you like completely cognizant during that?”   
  
Rex moves his hand to give a ‘sort of’ gesture, “being trapped between the realm of the Man Upstairs and Earth made things a little fuzzy at times. I mean I was conscious of my physical body at all times, but there were certain times where I was definitely not in our realm.”   
  
“What was the other realm like?”   
  
“Really freaky, like a lot more colorful than our world, not that I could fully comprehend it, it was hard to fully see everything with my 3rd dimension brain- Oh so like all the colors would moves around like water flowing down an ink filled page, nothing stayed still there, it that was pretty coo. Not the Being of Upstairs though, they were all incomprehensibly monstrous and also assholes.” 

  
“Wow,” Benny’s screen switches to show some stars, “the water flowing thing kind of reminds me of when I was knocked unconscious by the relic, I felt like I was stuck inside a water color painting that was on fire.”   
  
Jenny lets out a huff, “right if you guys are done, I would like to get back to Benny’s story, Denny never told me they tried to break you out-”   
  
“Wait is Denny like one person, you keep saying they,” Rex starts to ask confused but is cut off by Jenny.   
  
“Last time I checked they identified as genderfluid, and prefer they/them pronouns in most general settings,” Benny gives a little nod to back that up.

“But weren’t you guys like, astronauts in the 80’s?”   
  
“And?” Benny and Jenny respond at the same time.   
  
“You know, wasn’t everyone a bit more, close minded back then.”   
  
Jenny lets out a laugh, “listen bud, we were the most valuable assets Classic Space had, and with the fear of the Cold War going on. I mean like Classic Space had some real legit fear, the HQ had a built in nuclear bunk. And due to this fear the higher ups were afraid we were going to defect and help the enemy if they got rid of us.”

“Yet they still fired me.”   
  
“Well that’s because Denny pushed for it so muchhhhhh,” Jenny trails off on that final bit, realizing that’s something that Benny probably never knew, “they were really scared of you getting hurt in space again, bro…”

“Yeah, I just wish Denny, was like better at communicating, ya know,” Benny crosses his arms, letting out his staticky version of a sigh, “okay so where was I…”

  
  


**[CLASSIC SPACE HQ PARKING LOT, FEBRUARY 19th, 1984]**   
  
Denny is carrying a rather large cardboard box to their car, trying to appear not suspicious.   
  
But carrying an unlabeled box out of a government building after almost everyone had gone home is always going to look a little suspicious. 

Luckily to take Denny’s mind off the fact they were being incredibly suspicious, Jenny was standing out by her car. 

Jenny catches Denny out of the corner of her eyes, and goes, “oh shit,” quickly trying to throw something to the ground…   
  
Denny squints to try and see what it is, before realizing it had been a cigarette. Denny lets out a sigh placing the box down patting it, whispering, “I’ll be right back,” as they head over to Jenny they also mumble, “why can’t I just have some family members who take care of themselves.”   
  
Jenny tries to lean on the car and pretends to just notice Denny as they approach, “oh hey Den, what are you doing here so late,” she tries to give a laugh but just gives a cough instead.   
  
“Jenny why were you smoking?”   
  
“WHAAAAT, me, smoking, I’m not some high schooler Denz, I don’t” she breaks herself off by breaking into a long coughing fit.   
  
Denny folds their arms and raises an eyebrow, “Jen, what you do in your spare time is on you, but I know you have an addictive personality and I don’t want this to affect your work life.”   
  
Jenny looks at the still lit cigarette on the ground letting out a sigh, “Penny said I should do it, said that it would make me look cooler… I don’t think I have the lungs for them though.”   
  
“Knowing you’re an astronaut that last sentence is concerning, but Jen you really shouldn’t do something dumb like this to impress someone, especacially someone who’s supposed to be your soulmate.”   
  
“I know,” Jenny steps down on the cigarette, extinguishing it’s light, “but lately Penny’s been acting like nothing is good enough for her, that I’m not good enough for her…”

Denny places a hand on Jenny’s should shaking their head, “being soulmates with someone doesn’t mean you should force yourself to be with them. Your happiness should always take priority in a relationship.”   
  
Jenny tugs on the side of her arm, keeping her eyes on the ground, “...I know.”   
  
Denny takes their hand off and gives a small smile, “if you need help I’m always here for you.”   
  
Jenny looks back to her sibling giving a small smile, “thank you,” she looks over Denny’s shoulder to see the box sitting alone in the parking lot, “do you need help moving that to your car?”   
  
“Oh big time, it’s kinda heavy.”

  
  


**[RANDOM ALLEY-WAY, FEBRUARY 19th, 1984]**   
  


Blue is pretty sure twenty minutes had passed since Denny had snuck him out of the facility. He was also pretty sure Denny hadn’t let Jenny in on this weird scheme, she made no reference to knowing that he was in this crate.

He feels the car stop and Denny start to move the crate of the car’s trunk, only for it to slip, causing it to crash to the ground, sending the wood to splinter everywhere and Blue into the ground, his head hitting the concrete below him.    
  
He hits it with enough force it triggers a reboot, sending him shooting right back up, standing up and giving a blank stare at Denny.   
  
“Oh shit,” Denny moves quickly to grab Blue’s hand before he can move away, “Blue, please-”   
  
But Blue doesn’t even try to move away he just says, “Denny what the hell?!”

Denny’s eyes flick to Benny’s arm and back to his blank screen, sighing as he figures Blue doesn’t have a place to run off and lets go, “Blue, I was, trying to rescue you…”   
  
Blue finally lights on his screen, showing a frowning face, “Denny, I don’t need to be rescued.”   
  
“Yes you do!” The astronaut shouts at, stepping back covering their mouth after that, seemingly afraid of expressing themselves so loudly, “you… do, you can’t live as this pretend robot forever, one day someones going to find out the truth and you’ll get dissected and it’ll be my fault.”   
  
“It’s not going to be anyone’s fault but my own, and it’s not going to happen! And Denny, you can’t jeopardize your career over this, the career of the whole squad! I talked with Kenny today, he said you guys are on track to become the head of Classic Space. Also, I’m government property and I’m pretty sure stealing me is super illegal.”

Denny throws up their arms in frustration, “why do you get to be the only who jeopardizes themselves?! Just let me take a risk for you for once, I’m the older sibling, I’m supposed to protect you!”

Blue grows quiet at that, he hadn’t really seen Denny this angry since they were kids.

An old memory of Denny pulling Benny out of the jellyfish tank at the aquarium surfaces to his mind. The memory plays on with a small delayed static noise as he remembers his older sibling getting so angry, only for them to eventually calm down to explain they had gotten scared Benny could’ve been hurt.

Benny pushes his feet together and looks to the ground, feeling kind of guilty. Which is weird, it’s been four years, why start feeling guilty about traumatizing his friends and family now? Maybe denial wears down after time...   
  
He ends up mumbling, “Denz, did you even have a plan?”   
  
Denny relaxes at that question, and starts to smirk pulling out a folded pack of papers from their back pocket, “stole this one from Jenny, she’s made a lot of them so far. The plan is to have Kenny wreck up the place to make it like a Blacktron raid, and steal a bunch of important tech, including you. And then the next step is to make sure you don’t get tracked, and that’s why I brought you here. There’s some retro scientist dude chilling in a hideout near here, and I was going to have him fix you up so you’re untrackable.”

“Denz, that’s pretty sweet of you but I really don’t, need you to do this.”   
  
Denny opens their mouth to argue, but is cut off by a loud explosion behind them.    
  
The two astronauts turn around slowly to see the brick-wall behind them turned into smoldering rubble. A large man in dark green trench coat had flown out of the building , and was resting motionless against the opposing wall as what looked like steam rose off of him.   
  
From the hole in the wall two robots wearing black police uniforms walked out, taking aim at the man with some fancy sci-fi looking guns.   
  
Blue and Denny look at each other, giving one another the sibling look of ‘let’s get shit done’, giving one another a small nod before jumping in front of the robots.   
  
Benny moves swiftly, punching one of the robots in the face, only for it to break away to scrap metal, “DUDE who are these guys?”   
  
Denny moves to scoop up the big guy, slowly moving him to the car, “Super Secret Police, a few months ago they fired half their staff and replaced them with robots.”   
  
Benny ducks, narrowly avoiding a punch from the other before kicking it in the side, making it break in half, sending sparks flying everywhere as it shook on the ground until it died, “are we going to get arrested for killing robot cops?”   
  
“Those things don’t have recordings at all, as long as we get out of here before backup shows up they’ll never know we were here, now help me pick this guy up.”   
  


Blue runs over and helps stuff him into the back seat of the convertible, just sort of vaulting him over the door instead of bothering opening it for him, “I understand beating up robo-cops, always wanted to do that, but why are we rescuing this guy?”   
  
Denny slides into the driver seat and buckles up before answering, “he’s the scientist I came here to see, but looks like we need to do some emergency medical care.”   
  
Blue slides into the car and buckles up, turning around to look in the back seat at the guy, “well there are some spare medical kits in Lenny’s office, we could go use those to help him since we can’t really go to a hospital.”   
  
“Sounds good, let’s blow this popsicle stand,” And Denny presses down hard on the gas as Blue lets out small static laughter, having trouble believing his super serious sibling really just said that.

  
  


**[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, FEBRUARY 19th, 1984]**

  
  


They made it back to the HQ in under ten minutes, which Blue was holding onto his seat belt for dear life the whole time.   
  
As soon as they get out Blue scrambles out of his seat and rolls out of the car, “Denny since when did you start driving like that?”   
  
Denny unbuckles and steps out to help the unconscious passenger out of the car, giving a shrug at that question, “Kenny had me take up drag racing to help pay off his mortgage.”   
  
Blue goes to question that more, but decides it’s not that important, and moves to help carry the guy inside.    
  
They make their way to the elevator, carrying this huge guy between the two of them, to only be surprised by someone walking out of the elevator.

A person decked out in complete space walk gear, even with a thick helmet that light couldn’t seen through from the outside, though it wasn’t any official Classic Space colors, in fact it even had the Blacktron logo on it.   
  
Denny and Blue stare at the person in silence for a second before Denny lets out a laugh placing a hand on their hand, “oh right, Kenny uh mission plan changed a little at the moment, I’ll let you know when we can start it up again. And uh, you really didn’t need to wear all of that, I know we were trying to be obvious, but that’s a little too obvious.”   
  
‘Kenny’ is silent for a moment before talking through some built in microphone, the static distorting it a lot, “right, my bad, well I’ll just be waiting outside until you need me, uhhh take a chill pill and peace out.”   
  
He pushes past the group as he makes his way through the lobby and Denny shrugs. Benny wants to say something but as the elevator starts to close he decides to bring it up later moving quickly to help get this guy inside. 

Soon they get him dragged into the elevator, standing awkwardly next to one another, as they wait for the doors to re-open.

“So uh,” Blue tries to start up some small talk, “how’d you meet this guy?”   
  
“I met him at an underground Master Builder meetup.”   
  
The door finally opens, letting out a small chime as it does so and the group make their way to Lenny’s office.

“Why would you go to something like that?”   
  
Denny kicks open the door flinching a little as they see it get damaged, “because… I’m a Master Builder?”

Blue is quiet for a second, taking time to lay the poor guy on the table before looking to Denny and asking in a very shouty manner, “YYYYYou’re a master builder?”

Denny, who now has their back turned to Blue as they rummage through Lenny’s packed boxes pulling out supplies, shrugs, “yeah, I mean we all are.”   
  
“We???”   
  
Denny looks back to Blue blinking a few times before realizing, “oh fuck, you don’t know.” They walk closer putting down the medkit to place a hand on Blue’s shoulder, “okay, so some people are born with the ability to draw on the magic in our world that leaks through the realm-”   
  
“I don’t need ‘the talk’, I need you to explain that implication that ‘everyone’ is a master builder!” Blue glances down to the current Master Builder laying on the table, “and we should talk about while we patch up this guy.”   
  
“Alright,” Denny takes their hand back and begins unpacking some of the medkit, “so, right, master builders. Not everyone is one, but like the whole space squad is. Not Penny though, but she isn’t really a member anyways.”

Blue takes off the coat of the guy so that Denny can start to work, though he slows down a bit as he realizes this guy has some metal limbs, but quickly finishes the task, figuring to bring that up later, “so you’re all… Master builders?”   
  
“Don’t say it like that, you’re one too.”   
  
“A,” Blue freezes in place as a loading icon appears on his screen, taking a few seconds to think that over, “I’m a master builder???”   
  
“Yeah, it’s why you were so good at designing stuff and making blueprints bro. Like when you look at parts and see numbers floating around them? That’s from you being a Master Builder?”   
  
“I thought I just,” Blue looks down at his own hands, closing them as he loses that train of thought, “why didn’t you tell me?”   
  


“I thought you knew,” Denny puts away the bandages, and starts looking through the box, looking upset they can’t find anything, “I don’t think there’s any smelling salts in here, I’m gonna go like, make some coffee in the break room to try and wake him up.”   
  
“What are you going to do, pour it on him-” Blue asks, only to hear the door close quickly and realizes Denny is already gone, “ah, ask you later then.”

Blue looks back to the guy, a question mark flashing on his screen as he realizes there was still smoke rising off him. He examines some of the metal limbs, realizing they had taken some blasts from the robo cops’s guns.   
  
He walks over to the cabinets in the office, picking up some repair supplies that were in them, taking them back to the patient, and starts moving out burning bits, and as he reconnects one wire, the guy jolts up, making Blue step back and trip onto the floor.   
  
“Arrrrg,” he moans out, raising his newly repaired arm to his head.   
  
“Umm, sup,” Blue says giving a small wave, watching the guy blink slowly trying to process what he was seeing. Blue gives out a small static sound as he switches to proper protocol, “greetings, I am the Basic Leveling Unity 3rd edition Robot made to assist Classic Space. You were recently brought onto HQ property by Denny.”   
  
“Denny, that be the astronaut with the red suit, r’ght?”   
  
Blue lets out some static feeling his protocols quickly disappearing once again, “oh, yeah that’s Denny.”   
  
The guy eyes up the walls of the room, and then looks back to the nervous looking robot, “say, you be that Space Robot Mascot, don’t ye?”   
  
“Well I know Classic Space has been like plastering my face everywhere, but I’m not like the official mascot or in any sweet position with the company like that.”   
  
“You be a strange robot laddy.”   
  
Blue points a finger as he goes to respond, “that’s because… Say what’s your name”   
  
“MetalBeard,” he fruits out trying to get off the desk, only to be held back by his robot companion.   
  
“Is that because it looks like you have a m-”   
  
“The name do be derived from me metal beard.”   
  
“Oh, nice. And uh, dude you shouldn’t be like moving too much right now, you almost got killed by some like robo-cops.”   
  
“Those be mere scratches, I’ve taken cannonballs to the chest that did more damage than they could.”   
  
“Riiiiight, but you still were losing a lot of blood a few minutes ago, so it’s probably best to sit still for a few minutes.”   
  
“And why should I be listening to some scrap of metal.”   
  
Blue is silent for a moment, his screen turning off as he thinks. Surely, if this guy is a secret undercover Master Builder, it would be okay to let him know the truth, and if it wasn’t okay to let him know, he could blame Denny for bringing the guy here. His screen lights up again to his generic smiley face, and he responds, “cause I’m, kind of like you. I’m not a machine, just part machine, got blood (that’s mostly mine) and a human brain in here.”   
  
That leaves MetalBeard stunned for a second before he talks back, “then you do be the cyborg the astronaut wanted me to fix up tonight.”   
  
Blue lets out a little static laugh, “yeah, I think they want me to leave Classic Space. But I like it here, and I don’t mind being treated like a robot.”   
  
“Ye be a strange lad.”   
  
“Well Mr. Pirate Guy you aren’t exactly normal yourself.”   
  
  


**[BRICKSBURG METROPOLITAN AREA, SEPTEMBER X, 202X]**

“You knew MetalBeard???”   
  
Benny screen flickers after hearing Rex ask that, but gives a small shrug, “uh, yeah, after I met him that day, he would show up every now and then, and we sort of become pretty good friends. And he taught me a lot of cool master building stuff I never knew which was nice,” Benny’s screen flickers again as he looks over to Rex, “wait, how do you know about him?”

“He’s one-” Rex stops himself, correcting his statement, “he was one, of the people I called a friend at one point in my life.”   
  
“That’s like a really weird answer my dude,” Benny looks over to Jenny, “do you know what he means by that?”   
  
“Oh, Rex, just has trust issues.”   
  
“I don’t have any issues-” Rex cuts himself off, regaining composure before speaking again, “MetalBeard was one of the people who helped me save the world a few years ago. But him, like the rest of the people I used to know, left me to die alone on the side of the road. And then moved on with his life. And that’s all.”   
  
Jenny does a fake cough asking, “you sure that’s all?”

Rex does not look amused at all, but he complies to talk more, “annnnnnd he and those other people also showed up to stop me from destroying the city. I remember MetalBeard punching me so hard I flew through a wall. But that was back in like, what 2019? Ancient history, so what if all the people who used to be friends with me now hate my guts, they were bad people, so I should be happy they hate me. And why are we talking so much about me? I thought we were talking about your backstory Mr. Cool Cyborg…. Guy.”   
  
“Oh, right!” Benny perks right back up, clapping his hands together as he pulls up his internal memory logs so he can accurately recall the events, “so I think the next set of notable things happened in ‘85…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Benny’s backstory will be finished in the next chapter! Then it’s time to stop living in the past and have the soulmates finally get to know each other.


	5. My Days Here Are Done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final half of Benny's flashback. Some Lenny x Benny moments in this chapter as they rekindle their friendship, and their relationship, before things go bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some blood and death mention in this chapter but there's a warning in front of it, if you see that warning, skip to [BRICKSBURG METROPOLITAN AREA, SEPTEMBER X, 202X] to get past itm you should be able to understand what happened from context clues and all.

[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, June 21st, 1985]

Lenny lets out a sigh as he walks through the halls leading up to his office. Today was supposed to be an easy work day, do some simple paperwork, exercise for a few hours to get ready for his upcoming physicals, and maybe get home early so he could catch an episode of Jeopardy.

But instead of all that he got a call from Denny that Blue had some sort of accident and needed an emergency repair. So there goes his plans.

He opens the door to his office to see Denny standing worriedly in his office with Blue sitting on top of his desk, crushing papers underneath him as he holds his head in his hands.

Lenny closes the door and squints at Blue, it looks like his screen had been completely broken,”what happened.”

Denny speaks up, trying to not look directly at Blue as they talk, “some of the new recruits, thought it would be funny to see how durable he was.”

Lenny grows to look more concerned, stepping closer to Blue, “why didn’t you try to stop them?”

“I c-an’t,” Blue’s voice comes out broken, though it’s unclear if it’s due to his voice box being damaged or if he was crying, “I have protocols, I can’t-”

“Can’t what? Protect yourself?”

Blue’s shoulders spike up as Lenny raises his voice. Denny places a hand on Blue’s back trying to calm him down, “it’s not his fault, if he acted out against anyone it could, give away, ya know…”

“Well that’s stupid,” Lenny places his hand onto Blue’s head, “someone could just, kill him, and he couldn’t stop them.”

Denny retracts their hand from their brother and awkwardly tugs on their sleeve, “right…” They’re silent as they look around the room, unsure what they should say in response to that. Lenny was aware they had been trying to convince Blue to leave Classic Space, and he knew that their relationship had been reforming. Which was good, Blue needed his family, and his friends, somewhere deep down, he was still Benny. And Benny was terrified of being alone.

“I should, uh, leave you to fixing him, then, good luck,” and with that Denny was out the door, closing it tightly behind them.

The room is quiet after that, and Lenny starts to get to work. He grabs his tools from the cabinets and sets off to work on his co-worker. 

Blue was a co-worker, right? Sure he didn’t get paid, and was classified as company property, but he contributed more to the organization than anyone else. He, at least, was his co-worker in spirit, if nothing else.

“Blue, I need you to stop covering your face.”

“Oh, sor-ry Mr. Ink,” Blue slowly pulls away his hands from the broken screen. With his vision disconnected at the moment he can’t tell if Lenny flinched away or not. He knew the first few times Lenny had fixed him up he had been disturbed to see him without the screen.

“Let me know if this starts to hurt,” he starts disconnecting some wires.

“H-ey whhhhhhaaaaat-” Blue’s voice box trails off as he loses connection to it, and starts to frantically wave his hands around to signal to Lenny ‘HEY WHAT'S GOING ON’.

“Shit,” Lenny mumbles under his breath, quickly plugging them back in before grabbing a soldering iron from his bag, “I didn’t mean to do that.”

Blue’s voice comes back online, though it seems to be more quiet than it normally is, “it’s alright.”

“Well it seems most of your internal stuff is fine, though I’ll need to make you a new screen, I can get it done in a few days. And after that I’m writing something to overhaul your protocols.”

“Wuh?”

He runs his hand through his hair, seeming a little frustrated, not that Blue could notice, “I need to make it so you can protect yourself, I never wanna see you hurt like this again.”

“But you’ll always be there to fix me…”

There’s silence in the room, Lenny really wasn’t expecting that response. He eventually breaks it by letting out a soft laugh, “Blue, that’s not true.”

Blue’s heart starts making a small frantic beep as he closes his fists. How could he have been so careless, said something stupid- Lenny hated him now, he hated ever since he abandoned him to run off and destroyed his own life. He lets out a few staticy blips of a noise before he’s able to talk, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that-”

“Like what?” Lenny places a hand on the back of his neck, leaning back in the room, thankful Blue couldn’t see him blush like that, “oh you mean, haha. Blue I didn’t mean I was going to leave you, I meant that you’re probably going to outlive everyone.”

“Huh.”

There’s some sounds of paper shuffling around as Lenny pulls something out, “it’s in your blue-prints, your robotic heart, you melted down the relic that hit you in space.”

Blue adds a lot to the conversation by once again going, “huh.”

“That thing has like, some weird magical properties dude. It’s been healing you, like the crack in your skull you got after the accident, it’s completely gone, from the scans I’ve been doing on you, it really seems like that thing could keep you running, for, forever really.”

“I, don’t know what to do with this information, I thought I had like 4 years left to live max.”

Lenny lets out another laugh, “I, didn’t know you didn’t plan this. Even by accident you’re a genius.”

There’s another break of silence in the room as the two feel an awkward tension in the room, “it’s nice, to hear your laugh again. I missed it.”

“Well, I missed you, Be,-” he does a small cough correcting himself, “Blue…”

“I’m sorry,” Blue, moves his hands to try and cover his mouth, only to stop when he realizes, oh yeah, I don’t have a mouth…

“Huh?” That question caught Lenny off guard, there’s some genuine confusion in his voice.

“I just, I’m sorry, I did this,” he waves his hand over himself, “without even, like giving you a warning.”

“A warning?”

“I mean, I didn’t talk out anything with you, we were dating and your input on if I should do something stupid and dangerous should have been something I took. But I was, just so hurt, and alone, I didn’t even think anyone would care if I did just die-”

He’s cut off as he feels a tight pressure around his chest, and it takes a few seconds to register that Lenny just hugged him.

“Dude, everyone cared about you. Everyone still cares about you, I’m sorry, I didn’t reach out to you as much as I should’ve after the accident, I was just so scared you really hated me…”

Blue feels the oil drip down his helmet as his head tilts a bit, “I know, I’m not really Benny anymore, but I still miss you. I miss just being able to talk to you, you telling me about new breakthroughs in theoretical physics, us just goofing around in the robotics lab, trying to use the giant robot arm to throw lemons at the wall until we would get yelled at by higher ups… I guess what I’m trying to say, is that, if you can forgive me for hurting you, maybe we could be friends.”

Lenny pulls away from the hug, and gives a soft smile Blue can’t see, “I would like to be friends again.”

[SPACE, SEPTEMBER 19th, 1985]

“If there were two guys on the moon-”

“Kenny if you ask the moon rock question one more time I am pushing you out the airlock,” the astronaut in the red suit huffs out, floating over to a panel to start inputting some important looking numbers, making the screen light up.

“I only ask it cause you never give me an answer to it! Blue back me up on this!”

“Oh uh, yeah sure,” Blue responds, distracted at the moment. He was looking out the window of the ship, enamored by the vast number of stars he could see right now, the bright lights reflecting off his screen as he quietly floated there.

Kenny looks over to Denny, anxiously rubbing his arm, “is he doing okay?”

“He’s just in space mode, let him enjoy himself for a little while, we should probably get checking in on Lenny anyways.”

“Right, he should be wrapping up the first trial of his experiments now.”

Kenny floats down the ship, heading to the next corridor, and Denny follows, but not before giving a small pat on Blue’s back, “if you need anything let us know dude.”

Blue just gives a small nod at that, and continues to watch the stars.

After an indeterminate amount of time passes and his co-workers have not yet re-shown themselves into this chamber, he tears himself away from the window, changing focus onto the panel Denny was messing with earlier.

He’s on his third attempt to guess the password when he hears someone bump into the ceiling. Looking up he notices Jenny had entered the room at some point, “how long have you been in here?”

She looks a bit startled, not expecting to have been noticed so soon, “oh, a few minutes, what are you doing?”

Blue flashes an annoyed face on his screen as he looks back down to the panel, “there’s a Game & Watch system on the ship, but somebody locked it away so I wouldn’t get distracted by it.”

Jenny lets out a small snort at that, and pushes herself down so she can reach the panel, “here, let me try,” she presses a few buttons, and sure enough the ship’s safe pops open!

Blue quickly goes to grab it, but then becomes distracted by something else shiny in there. Reaching down he picks up a small white ring with a dark gem on it, “why is this-”

“GIVE me that-” Jenny snaps it out of his hands, her voice breaking as she floats back up to the ceiling, hitting her head on it.

“Ohhhhh kay then, is that ring yours?”

“It’s,” she looks away from Blue, shoulders hunched down, “Penny proposed to me before the flight, and was like, ‘oh don’t give me your answer now, I’ll wait till you come back,’ and I just…” Her voice trails off at the end.

“I thought, you were going to break up with her soon?”

“I was! I had a whole 7 page plan to break it to her, and I’ve been trying to end the relationship, but I’m, scared of hurting her.”

“But she isn’t scared of hurting you.”

Jenny looks a little shocked at how blunt that was, “yeah… I’ll break her the news after we get back home.”

“Hey cheer up, I’ll let you watch me play some Game & Watch.”

“Geeze, thanks.”

But the game time was short lived cause Denny returns to the room, and quickly looks annoyed, “Blue I said you couldn’t play that until after we finished experiments.”

“Yeah well Lenny programmed free will into me so take it up with him.”

Denny grumbles something under their breath, to only look surprised to see their sister with some tear marks down her face, “Jen, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I was just talking about how I was going to break up with Penny…”

“Uhhhhhhhh,” Denny gives a long ramble as they gave a panicky look to their family member, fidgeting a little as they bounced their foot, “Jen, you remember all our conversations on the ship are recorded and sent back down to HQ, right???”

“Ah,” Jenny looks up to her floating sibling, her eyes widening as she realized, “oh crud Penny’s listening to the live broadcast right now.”

“Oh damn that sucks,” is the helpful comment she gets from her brother before Denny smacks him on the head only to mutter ‘ow’, because his head is encased in a big block of metal.

[CLASSIC SPACE TESTING GROUNDS, JANUARY 7th, 1986]

“Turn Left! Left!!!” Blue shouts, hand holding tightly onto the neon lit hovering golf cart as it heads straight towards a lake.

“I’m trying, the wheel is stuck!!!” Lenny yells, trying to slam on the breaks, “this thing isn’t slowing down!”

And in a matter of seconds the prototype hovering golf cart that Lenny had taken for a test drive is completely submerged onto the lake, sending the two to slowly sink into the water. Lenny rushes to yank away his seatbelt, and turns to Blue, the poor cyborg’s screen lit up with exclamation marks as he helplessly pulls against his seatbelt. 

Lenny reaches down, releasing Blue from his restraint, before grabbing him by his torso as he slowly floats towards the surface, eventually breaking through the water and taking several deep breaths as he coughs out some water.

“Uhhh Mr. Ink,” Blue says, his screen facing down as he’s carried up.

Lenny lets out one more cough before finally speaking up, “what’s the problem Blue?”

“You’re kind of floating.”

“Well we’re in water, I should hope I’m floating.”

“You’re not in the water anymore,” Blue kicks his legs dangling in the air to help get Lenny’s attention.

Lenny looks down, and to his surprise sees himself floating a few inches above the water, “well this is new.”

[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, JANUARY 14th, 1986]

Blue is working on calibrating some new scales that had arrived earlier that week, when he hears a door open behind him.

“Excuse me but the lab is closed right now, if you need to-”

“Basic Leveling Unit, shut up,” Penny says as she walks forward.

Blue finds himself completely silenced, but that doesn’t stop him from flipping her off.

“Man HQ forcing Lenny to code away free-will from you is hilarious, anyways, speech re-activate.”

“Ms. Fucking Blackjack, how can I assist you,” he may be constrained to his protocols but he knew his way around them well enough.

“I was wondering if you knew the reason your whole lil space squad has been missing for the last week.”

Now, Blue did know they all flipped their beans when Lenny showed up floating and Kenny had taken him to his totally legal in-home science lab to run some tests, and the whole squad had been pinching in to help figure out what was going on. But Blue didn’t really trust Penny enough to tell her any of that.

“As far as I’m aware Mr. Ink was last seen testing his new anti-gravity technology. Perhaps the squad as you called it, is helping him test some equipment.”

“Right, right,” Penny squeezes something in her hand, looking down at it before looking up to Blue, “oh hey did you know Public Relations made a little stuffed toy of you? They’re selling it at the launch bay’s gift shop.”

She tosses him the toy, and of course he catches it, he has perfect reflexes after all. He turns it over in his hands, “guess they’re really pushing for me to be the official mascot.”

“Well yeah, after the whole audio of your last space trip got into the hands of the general public the higher ups had to scramble to make sure a free-will robot wasn’t going to throw the population into hysterics.”

“Right, that audio.... Hey you know how you keep avoiding the rest of the space squad, they don’t hate-”

“Yes they do,” Penny cuts him off, lettings out a sigh as she brushes her hair out of her face, “listen, I know I’m a,” she does some quotations as she says, “bad person,” and then lower her hands, “which is fine, or whatever. I don’t need other people slowing me down, I got big plans for my future to get to the top. Anyways, let me know when your squad gets back to work, no one can find the prototype hover-cart.”

That’s cause it’s at the bottom of the lake, Benny thinks but doesn’t say, instead he says, “of course Ms. Blackjack.”

[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, FEBRUARY 2nd, 1986]

Blue bounces his leg nervously as he sits on the desk on Lenny’s desk.

His head snaps around as he hears his friend enter, Lenny closing the door behind him, as he sighs and leans against it, “thanks for coming in.”

“It’s no problem,” Blue hops down from the desk and walks over to Lenny, a concerned face displayed on his screen, “so, was Kenny able to figure out your floating problem? Do you know how your anti-gravity experiments are causing it?”

Lenny rubs the back of his neck as he lets out a nervous laugh, “ah geez, funny thing, apparently it’s not related to the anti-gravity technology at all.”

Blue’s screen turns blank as he processes that and then switches to a question mark, “oooookay. Will you elaborate more on that.”

Lenny takes a seat in his fancy desk chair and Blue hops back onto the desk, “so, after the golf cart crash, Denny and Jenny came to pick me up.”

“Right you were having an anxiety attack and I was trying to keep you from floating away.”

Lenny flinches a bit at that, “um, right, so they took me to Kenny’s place, and I had some test run on me. It looked like I was infected by something. It wasn’t a virus or bacteria, but something, else.”

“Like a mutation?”

“Yeah, and then since Kenny got scared about it being some dangerous mutation, he ran the tests on the rest of the squad, and it looks like they have it too, so like first thought was to let the rest of Classic Space know, in case the thing had spread to anyone else, but like Jenny interrupts the panic to say she’s seen the mutation in the tissue of some organs she has.”

“What does that mean?”

“When y- when Benny died the police found a few of his organs in his garage, Jenny, um kept them.”

“Is she allowed to do that?”

Lenny rolls his eyes, seeming to be annoyed he was being taken off topic, “when y- when a person dies, their body is legally owned by their family man, so she can. Anyways she said she said in the case of those organs the mutation was caused because the person they belonged to had long exposure to a relic.”

“Oh.”

“And so like, a few days pass, and Jenny comes back with a bunch of books, and was like ‘floating appearing in people has only occurred a handful of times in recorded history, and all the times were linked to some sort of relic’.”

“Oh.”

“Now, Blue, the rest of the squad was all asking me if I had contact with a relic, cause you know they had contact during the accident. But I wasn’t present for that, so they figured that couldn’t be the reason for it. But turns out they were all very surprised to find out you melted down your relic to turn it into your mechanical heart.”

“Did… I mutate you?” Bleu presses his hands together as he stares down at the ground.

“Well, I mean technically. Jenny’s still on sick leave studying relic mutation. Usually they aren’t harmful in any capacity, and usually the mutations are like weird mind stuff, you know maybe cause prophetic dreams, grant master building skills, or cause people to become obsessed with something to the point of self-destruction.”

“Okay the relic made me obsessed with space, Jenny already gave me that lecture and I still think I did this to myself out of my own free-will. Not the best use of my free-will, but it was still my choice.”

“Okay still a touchy subject, yeah so Kenny thinks if I do some sort of sealant on the inside of your mechanical body, no one else should get mutated. And Denny is going to spend the day running around getting samples from everyone to see if anyone else in the HQ got mutated.”

“So, everyone who is mutated, will they float?”

“Yeah, probably, I was just the first to figure it out I guess.”

Blue seems to be in a better mood now, his default smile returning to his screen, “so do you think I’ll be able to float?”

“Good to see you’re focusing on what’s important here.”

“What could be more important than having cool floating powers?”

[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, APRIL 19th, 1987]

“Catching the Blacktron spy.”

“Wuh huh,” Blue snaps back into the conversation, zoning out for the last few minutes.

“Ugh,” Denny sighs as they turn their attention back to the cyborg, “okay to recap, Blacktron has gotten their hands on some of our upcoming technology and is claiming they created it first. This is obviously the work of someone on the inside, but the higher-ups don’t want to admit it.”

Jenny raises her hand up and Lenny and Kenny glance over to her.

Denny lets out another sigh, “Jen you don’t need to raise your hand.”

“Right, um, so aren’t we kind of the higher-ups at this point. I mean we,” she looks over to Blue and steps back on that statement, “almost all of us have been moved to executive offices, and Lenny is like gunning for that administrator position.”

“Well, you’re right…” Denny leans against their desk, looking out the window of their office, “it is hard to get out of the mindset that we’re important here. But the problem still stands when I try to bring this up at meetings the other higher-ups get panicky and insist nothing is wrong.”

“You don’t think, they want to get bought out by Blacktron, do you?” Blue says, causing everyone to shift their attention to him.

Denny places their hands together and points them at Blue, “bro I’m gonna need you to explain what the fuck you mean by that.”

“Well since its inception Blacktron, the privately owned aero-space and research organization has been trying to prove Classic Space is out of date, that government funding should go to them and their secretive research that doesn’t benefit the public good.”

“Blue get to the point.”

“Well, if the government decided Blacktron would provide better results for what they want, they would probably merge our facilities, and most of the higher-ups would be kept on and probably get a hefty pay raise. And a good lot of those guys probably want that to happen.”

“Something like that couldn’t happen,” Lenny's voice raises into a panicked tone, “we’re all, too important here, the other higher-ups would give us a warning, right?”

“They might give you a warning,” Kenny grumbles, “but they would be more than willing to can the rest of us.”

Lenny looks around the room confused at that statement, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Lenny,” Denny starts speaking, in a softer tone than Kenny had been using, “you’re just, more normal. The other higher-ups, they like people who are similar to them, people who don’t cause problems. The rest of the squad, while we are valuable assets that they’re afraid to lose, isn’t well liked around here. I mean surely you knew this, right?”

“I thought, I thought everyone liked us…” Lenny is quiet after that, silently accepting some comforting pats on the back from Jenny as Kenny continues to grumble.

“What are we supposed to do?” Blue asks.

“Well if we’re the only ones who care about the spy, I guess we need to scout out and find them,” Denny gives a shrug, “and then probably kill them when we find them.”

Lenny breaks his silence as he looks at Jenny and asks, “they’re, joking right?”

Jenny glances to Denny and lets out a nervous laugh, nodding as she says, “of couuuurse they are.”

Blue and Kenny exchange a glance in the background suggesting they don’t think Denny is joking about that.

[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, APRIL 22nd, 1987]

It's a nice evening, hitting that sweet spring temperature where it’s not too cold but not quite the unbearable heat of summer yet.

Blue holds the door open for the last employee leaving that night, giving a simple smile as he waves them goodbye, and they happily return the gesture. Most of the company was still pretty fond of the funny little robot guy.

He locks up the door, letting out a small static sigh as he does so. Sure almost everybody was happy with him working here, even his old squad, something he never imagined would happen. But there was one party that seemed to be less than thrilled about him.

He figures Penny was still dealing with the breakup, and that’s why she had so much beef with him. 

Anyway, back to focusing on the nice night, the only blemish on it was an alarm going off.

“Ah, major suckage,” Blue mutters under his breath as he runs over to the receptionist desk in the lobby. Several sections of the HQ were written down on a panel with lights on top of them, and the robotic lab’s light glowed a bright red.

Classic Space really needed to hire some security guards.

And with that thought in his head he started running towards the robotics lab, making it there a lot faster than a human would have made it. Since he has cool robotic legs that’s probably obvious.

So he kept running until he got there. There was a lot of running involved. He definitely got there-

[BRICKSBURG METROPOLITAN AREA, SEPTEMBER X, 202X]

“Hey Benny, you doing alright dude?” Rex awkwardly tries to pat him on his shoulder, seemingly not having good practice with close contact in a good while.

Benny’s screen statics out before flashing back to its normal brightness, “yeah, I’m fine.”

“You are kind of getting off topic on your recap there bro,” Jenny crosses her arms as she leans back on the couch, “anyways, there was never a reported break-in on April 22nd.”

“That’s because I wasn’t allowed to report it!” 

Jenny looks to her brother with surprise, “what.”

“It was- Penny was in the lab stealing something-” he curls up his fist as he looks to the ground, “I can’t remember exactly what she took, I think she ran some memory deletion commands on me…”

“Sounds like something she would do,” Jenny grumbles, pressing herself further into the couch, “wait how can you remember the night at all?”

“Ah, well she left enough of my memory intact to let me remember her threatening me…”

[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, APRIL 22nd, 1987]

“So you’ve been doing this? You’ve been selling out to Blacktron?!”

The girl in the dark suit lets out a laugh, though the laugh is distorted, as it’s muffled by some sci-fi esque mask she was wearing, “I’m just moving science forward. It’s honestly not fair Classic Space is hogging all this technology to themselves.”

“That’s BS this technology is going to the public as soon as it’s stable enough.”

“Oh, including the Basic Leveling Robot? Sure would be beneficial to the public for such a useful creation to be out in the public,” Penny smirks behind her helmet, letting out another laugh, “oh right, you’re not really a robot. You’re just some dweeb playing pretend. Man if the truth about you came out, Classic Space would have to be shut down. Like how many laws is this organization breaking by having you here?”

“I, what are you getting at?”

“Well Mr. Robocop, I’m getting that if you get in the way of me sharing technology, I’ll get in the way of you being alive. And you know, take down this whole place with me. Man you know your space squad will probably face some major jail time for knowingly harboring you. Oh wait did I ‘borrow’ that threat from you, my apologies.”

Blue stands there, his fist shaking, but he remains at a loss for words. He really couldn’t stop her, not without risking his life and the future of his family.

So he switches tactics, “why? Why do you feel the need to do this?”

“Why? Because my future here leads to a dead end. I’m just some nobody who got dumped by an astronaut, but Blacktron promised me power, an actual chance to make a difference.”

“Okay, but like, you know you can’t trust them, right? They’re going to back stab you. That’s like the whole thing with their organization.”

[BRICKSBURG METROPOLITAN AREA, SEPTEMBER X, 202X]

Benny sighs, rubbing the back of his helmet, “I don’t really remember what she said after that…”

“It’s alright man, having a working memory is overrated,” Rex smiles as he gets a small laugh from Benny for that joke.

Jenny shakes her head though, not as amused by that, “I can’t believe she was messing with your memories, why didn’t you tell anyone she was doing that?”

“I did eventually tell Denny, after we all sort of figured Penny was the Blacktron spy.”

[DENNY'S OFFICE, JANUARY 20TH, 1988]

Blue softly knocks on Denny’s office door, trying to look in through the frosted glass to see if they were in there.

There’s a loud thud from within the room followed by Denny yelling “ow,” before they finally open the door, “hey what’s floating?”

“Really funny,” Blue pushes past them and takes a seat in the chair opposite of the desk, taking notice of the scattered papers on the desk, “hey, did you fall asleep in here again?”

Denny lets out a small laugh that their heart really isn’t in, “ah, yeah I did. I’ve been crunching to get reports done on the Neo Rocket, we need to have the thing finished for the 1990 launch you know.”

“You shouldn’t push yourself too hard, humans need an average of 8 hours of sleep to maintain proficient brain function, you just did an all nighter yesterday too!”

Denny takes a seat at their desk giving Blue a puzzled week, “the last time I did an all nighter was last week, are you having memory blanks again?”

Blue turns his head to look down at the floor, “well, yeah, that’s why I came to see you.”

Denny sighs rubbing their temples, “Blue, you know everytime you experience one of these blanks, within a few weeks Blacktron shows off some of our stolen technology. Now me and the squad are thinking that Penny has something-”

“I CAN’T TALK ABOUT IT.”

Denny bolts right up after Blue yells, the cyborg shuffling around quickly as he tries to raise his hands to cover where his mouth would be if he had one.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell, I’m just… You guys can’t confront Penny about it. She…”

“She what?” There’s intent to cause physical harm in Denny’s voice.

“She’s been threatening to, you know, reveal, me if I let anyone know she’s the spy. She said you guys would get in serious trouble if anyone found out-”

“Oh like you did?” Denny is more relaxed now, able to jab at their sibling.

Blue’s screen switches to an angry emoticon, “I get it, it was uncool of me to do that. But it’s majorly more uncool of Penny to be doing it. And she keeps erasing whatever she’s stealing from my memory so I can’t even give you guys a heads up.”

Denny leans back in their chair sighing, “well, this does make things more difficult. But you know Blue, if you weren’t here, we would be able to take her out and she wouldn’t have this blackmail on us.”

“But-”

“But yes, you’re an integral part of the Neo Rocket mission, something we need to be successful to prove Lenny’s ready to take on the Administrator role.”

“Though-”

“Though, if you retired after that, went into storage, marked up as scrap, we could get you out of here without much thought. And then take Penny out of the equation. It’s two years away, so we’d need to keep our head down low until then.”

Blue doesn’t say anything after that, he just slinks down in the chair.

“Listen Blue, I know you don’t want to give up space, but if Classic Space doesn’t exist there’s nothing going to be able to take you to space.”

“No, I understand, but what will happen to me after leave?”

Denny’s expression goes softer, “Blue, you’re family. Me and Jenny will take care of you, no matter what happens. MetalBeard is always saying he’s up to give you some human cosmetic upgrades, and if you wanna really disappear I’ve been looking into some new Master Builder hide outs. Kenny kind of wants to move into one of them anyways.”

“Can I have some time to think about this? I mean, we need to do it, but it’s still a lot.”

“Well you got two years bro,” Denny kicks their legs up on their desk and leans back further in their chair, “and I’ll let Lenny know about your memory blanks, maybe he can do some modifications to let you regain them or something. Now if you excuse meI have some sleep to get to.”

“Goodnight Denny,” Blue says as he does a small wave, making sure to quietly close the door on his way out.

[CLASSIC SPACE HQ ROOF, NOVEMBER 3rd, 1989]

Blue sits down on the roof, looking up at the stars, his peaceful concentration broken as the sound of fabric being torn comes from beside him.

"Do you really have to do that?" He asks.

Penny rolls her eyes as she tosses the little Blue mascot she had just stabbed the ground far below them, "you didn't have to follow me up here."

"I might not be able to stop you from stealing stuff, but I can make you uncomfortable while you do it.”

She rolls her eyes again as she grabs another Blue stuffed toy, apparently she had brought a whole bag full of them, and stabs into it once more, "I’m not even stealing anything tonight! Ugh, Basic Leveling Unit, switch topics."

"Why are you doing that?"

She tosses the broken toy down, smiling as it hits the pavement, "stabbing stuff relieves stress."

"Why are you stressed?"

She grabs the next little mascot toy, clenching it tight as she hears that question, "I, don't want to talk about that."

She holds the butter knife to the center of the toy, but pulls it away before she breaks through the fabric, and simply places it on the ledge, "say Blue, if you knew things were… Going to change, that the life you knew was going to end soon, what would you do?"

He's silent for a moment as he thinks about the question, making a mental note that it was ominous as heck, "I would probably hurry up and let Lenny know I still love him. Been putting that off for years now."

She lefts out a snort at that, "that's kind of cute. I guess I would want to let Jenny know I still love her, but, she wouldn't want me. I've done too many bad things."

"It's never too late to start being good."

Penny picks up the little Blue doll and places him back in the backpack with the others, "maybe you're right," she holds out the backpack to him, and he takes it, "uh, thanks for following me up here even if it was just to make sure I didn't steal anything. You actually calmed me down more than the stabbing did."

"You're really weird Ms. Blackjack."

She lets out a laugh and waves goodbye, heading back into the building. 

Leaving Benny alone on the roof to think about what he said, that he really did wish Lenny knew how he felt. 

Maybe he needed to finally get it over with. 

He just needed some time to figure out what to do...

[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, DECEMBER 23rd, 1989]

That morning one Leonard Pink Ink had gotten a mysterious note on his desk, one asking for a meeting in the now abandoned computer warehouse rooms.

Penny stops Lenny in the hallway, clipboard in her hand, and an unreadable look on her face, “listen Mr. Ink, you know how you’re my favorite-”

Lenny raises an eyebrow at her, “You’re favorite what.”

She gives an exasperated sigh, moving one arm to gesture she’s annoyed, “you know like, my favorite person, that works here.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Her emotionless face breaks for a moment, but she jumps back into her cold stare and starts to talk to him again, “well, you are, and I just think maybe… You and the rest of your space squad shouldn’t come to work tomorrow.”

Lenny tenses up, does she know what he was planning, “why’s that.”

She glances down to her clipboard, biting her lip, “I just have, a bad feeling about tomorrow, and you guys, despite all your flaws, don’t deserve bad things to happen to you.”

“Well I can take care of myself Ms. Blackjack, and with the launch a few weeks away I can’t afford to let bad feelings get in the way of work.”

She sighs, looking defeated, “well alright.”

As she walks away Lenny relaxes a bit. And then he gets back on his way to his meeting, arriving in the old room in no time.

He walks around the room, running his hand over the walls where the huge hulking computers were once held, of course Classic Space’s decrease in computing size was de to the developments in transistor technology, man if Benny was-

His thought is cut off, his attention turned to the robot entering the room.

Lenny gives a little smile, “sup Blue, whatcha need to talk about?”

Lenny watched as he was silent for a second, he knew inside Benny was switching over to manual control, he memorized all the little ways the guy would hesitate as he inputted codes.

“I’m sorry.”

Lenny takes his turn of standing in silence before giving a small awkward laugh, rubbing the back of his head, “Blue we’ve done this, I know you’re sorry about-”

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long.”

Lenny smiles falters and his hand falls back down and he tilts his head in confusion, staying quiet so Blue could continue.

“I, I really miss you. I miss holding you in my arms, and you telling me I’m brighter than any star in the sky even if that’s scientifically impossible, and I miss lying in bed with you every night, wondering when our soulmate string was going to show up, because I loved you more than anything.”

“Oh,” Lenny looks around the empty room, not sure how to take this.

“And, I, still love you.”

“Oh,” Lenny lets out a little cough after saying that blush rising to his face, “that’s like totally mental, cause I might still love you Benny.”

Right after the cyborg says that, he hears a large beep and Lenny’s attention snaps back to Blue, and the human asks, “what was that?”

Blue is looking down, his hand hovering above his chest, “I think that was my heart.”

“Was it a good beep?”

“Yeah, I was, just expecting you to turn me down.”

Lenny walks over to Blue and pulls him into a hug, “how could I ever turn down a cute screen like yours?”

Blue is hesitant for a second, before hugging Lenny back, his screen turning into a flash of hearts scrolling by.

And then the sweet moment is brought to an end as the two hear footsteps approach the room. In a panic Blue grabs Lenny’s hand and pulls him towards the back of the room, heading into an old closet of the room, closing it just as some individuals enter the room.

Blue is pressed against Lenny in the tight closet, the only sound the two can hear is Blue’s heart quietly beeping between the two of them.

Outside of the closet Lenny can barely make out what the person is saying.

“Yes I’m in a secure area, this area is roped off to everyone,” there’s a pause as the guy listens to someone, seemingly on the phone. Lenny tries to get a peak, realizing it’s one of the mysterious higher ups (one that Lenny was pretty sure he was placed in a position to replace). “Your demands, are most unusual, but with the current state of Classic Space, it’s my best option moving forward,” there’s another pause before the guy checks his watch and shakes his head, “yes, I agree to everything, there will be a group to meet your party at the entrance tomorrow morning.”

Lenny holds his breath as he holds Blue’s hand watching as the guy finally leaves the room, staying quiet until he can no longer hear his footsteps.

“I think we’re alone now,” Lenny says relaxing a little, and smiles as he can see Blue do the same as he hears his heart beeps slow down and grow quieter, “say Benny, I did want to try and see you today before your impromptu meeting.”

“You did?”

“Well, yeah, I had an offer for you. I’ve been looking into some of the paperwork and rules of Classic Space, and once equipment has turned at least ten years and hasn’t been put away into storage, active employees can put in a request to retire the technology.”

“You want to retire me?”

“Well, here’s the kick, the employee that puts in the paperwork can also request to take possession of said technology to study it. So, you could, live with me. No more pretending to be an emotionless robot.”

“Oh,” Blue’s robotic voice glitches a bit, as he is filled with conflicted emotions.

“I know, you don’t want to give up space-”

“You’re worth giving it up,” Blue’s glitched up voice speaks up, “and I’ve been talking with similar plans with Denny, I think the whole space squad would be better off if I was taken off the shelf.”

Lenny’s expression grows softer, and raises a hand to run it over Blue’s helmet, “and I’ve been doing a lot of research in some new bio engineering technologies, I have a few blueprints that could ‘downgrade’ or more or less, give you more human capabilities, you’ll be able to feel and pass as human.”

Blue lets out a few small glitched out beeps, not sure how to even begin to respond. He never expected to be able to go back.

Lenny sighs as he moves his hand to open the closet, “you don’t have to give me your answer today, have some time to think it over, I mean we do have till January until you’ve been here ten years, but I can get the paperwork started as soon as you let me know.”

Blue nods his head as he lets out another small staticy beep.

Lenny pats him on the shoulder as he fumbles with the door, able to open it but was also leaning on it while doing that so he tumbles to the ground, taking Blue with him.

They lay on the ground a moment, before both breaking into laughter, Blue’s a broken static mess of chirps, causing Lenny to look over and say, “you know I always loved your laugh.”

Blue’s not even able to respond to that his face glitches out from emotions as he attempts to bury his face in the shoulder of Lenny, just making Lenny laugh more.

The rest of the day goes by peacefully, though everyone seems to notice Blue to be performing better than he has been in awhile. Some might even notice him humming as they pass him in the halls.

[CLASSIC SPACE HQ, DECEMBER 24th, 1989]

Blue waits in the hallway outside of Lenny’s office early that morning, his screen increasing brightness as he sees Lenny approach.

Lenny was fumbling to get his keys out when he finally notices Blue standing there, and lets out a small laugh, “ah good morning.”

“Good morning Mr. Ink,” Blue says, making his face display a wink screen as he does two finger guns.

The astronaut finishes unlocking his office and holds the door open for his friend, “I take it you wanted to talk more about what I proposed yesterday?”

“Hell yeah I do,” He gives a little nod before walking in. 

He always loved being in Lenny’s office, so nicely decorated, he wonders if his house was decorated the same way. He can’t really remember what it used to look like.

Lenny closes the door, and shoulders drop a bit as he relaxes for a moment before focusing his attention back to Blue, “soooooo, you’re on board with everything? The whole ten year retirement?”

“It’s only nine years so far, Mr. Ink” Blue interjects, his face flashing a nine before moving back to a happy face.

Lenny rolls his eyes, “these rooms have been sound proof for years,, you can relax a little Benny.”

“Right,” Benny could hear his heart beep faster at the sound of Lenny calling him that, sometimes he would think his friends had forgotten who he used to be, “sorry Lenny.”

Lenny takes Benny’s hand and gives it a squeeze, “and you don’t have to apologize when it’s just us.”

Benny lets out the small glitched out laugh he has, his smile slightly becoming a bit lopsided as he relaxes, “Lenny, I really want this to happen, but you’re going to be Classic Space’s Administrator in a few months, if you’re the one caught with me you’ll be risking everything-”

Lenny gives his hand a squeeze, a merely symbolic gesture, he knew Benny couldn’t feel it, “you’re worth the risk Benny.”

The robot leans in closer to Lenny, resting his head against the other’s chest, “you know I remember being taller than you, did you get a growth sport sometime in the last 9 years?

Lenny lets out a laugh now, and gosh does Benny miss hearing his laugh, “nah, Kenny just showed me where to get some concealed heel shoes, adds a good amount of height.”

The two laugh for a bit longer, though Benny wasn’t sure why he was laughing. He guesses he hadn’t had a chance to be this happy in a long time.

“Maybe after I downgrade you can get some for me.”

Lenny brushes his thumb along the bottom of Benny’s screen, “you know we don’t have to downgrade, if you’re afraid of it.”

“No, I want to be more organic,” Benny’s heart was now giving off beeps so loud he was sure Lenny could hear it, “I want to be as close to human as I can again, I do want to grow old with you, be by your side for-for-for,” Benny’s voice starts to skip as black oil spills out from under his screen.

Lenny frowns, leaning down to give Benny a kiss on the top of the head, before heading to a bookshelf in the room to grab some paper towels, handing them to Benny as he gave a few supportive pats on his shoulder, “It’s okay to cry, Benny.”

Benny stops trying to speak as his voice continues to skip. He wipes up the oil, and once he calms down enough, he places them on Lenny’s desk and pulls him into a tight hug.

Lenny hugs back, a smile pressed on his face as he spoke softly, “so I got the paperwork all ready to go, I can get the forms submitted today, and in, say two weeks after the launch you could be home free at my place, how does that sound?”

“Sou-sounds perfect.”

And that was a nice dream, a nice but very short dream, of living out a peaceful life full of love.

Sadly you have to wake up from dreams, no matter how short they are.

There’s a loud sound of static from Lenny’s desk as his intercom turns on and a voice requests his attention.

He gives a quizzical look to Benny as he walks over to the microphone, holding down the button to speak, “hello, this is Lenny, what do you need?”

The voice speaks out again, and Lenny can swear he can hear Penny talking in the background too muffled to make out though, “we need to have the BLU3-BOT brought down to the robotics lab, it seems it was scheduled for some last minute diagnostic tests.”

“Sir, I’m the robotic specialist in charge of the bot’s diagnostic tests and upkeep, and I don’t remember scheduling a diagnostic test for it.”

“Oh well that’s since you’re not in charge of this test, we have some outside contractors here for this test, they’re going to cut into the bot to make sure it’s not corroded after ten years of working.”

“Nine Years,” interjects Benny, unable to stop himself from correcting someone.

There’s a moment of silence on the other side as Lenny looks up to Benny in a panic and the voice speaks through the speaker again, “Oh is the Bot with you? Great, I’ll send someone to take it off your hands now.”

And then the line goes quiet as the other person drops the connection.

Lenny can hear Benny’s heart beep loudly, the sound of it echoing off the walls.

He walks over to Benny grabbing him by the shoulders, “okay, we need to stay calm and not freak out.”

“You seem to be freaking out dude.”

“YEAH,” Lenny concedes to that, eyes trained heavily on Benny at the moment, the cyborg screen remained blank as he let his heart panic away, “but we can handle this, we need to do the emergency extraction procedure.”

“The what?”

Lenny sighs, moving his hands off of Benny, “Jenny has been making escape plans for you for the last nine years, one of them involves getting you out as soon as possible in case of an emergency. Now you need to run and find her or Denny, and I’ll head to the robotics lab to buy us some more time.”

“Lenny this doesn’t seem safe, maybe I should just-”

But Lenny doesn’t take no for an answer, he leans down and kisses him on the top of the head, “don’t worry everything will work out, but we gotta move fast, you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Okay,” Lenny opens the door and gives a small smile to Benny, saying a brief, “love you.” Before disappearing down the hall.

And with that Benny’s bolting out the door, running in the opposite direction as he heads to Jenny’s office, and starts banging on the door.

And the door opens almost immediately, “dang Blue what’s you all worked up?”

“Some people are here to cut me open and Lenny said we need to do an emergency extraction.”

Hey eyes open in excitement as she stands there for a brief moment taking that in, before grabbing his hand and pulls him down the hallway at a breakneck pace, looking down it doesn’t even seem like she’s walking, and that’s because she’s abusing her floating powers to get them to the elevator faster, “I’ve been waiting for this day for nine years Ben! Nine years!”

They make it to elevator doors and she slams on the down button, taking a break to pull out her pager and send a message out to the rest of the squad, ‘Breaking Benny Out Emergency Evac at Elevator’.

The elevator dings as it arrives, but before the duo can go inside, they’re greeted by a smiling face on the other side.

Penny walks out and decks Jenny right in the face, sending her back a few feet.

“What the hell Blackjack?” Jenny yells clutching her face, feeling it pound from the impact.

“Oh sorry about that, it was a reflex. Anyways, I was sent here to make sure Blue got to the robotic lab!”

“Ben, take the stairs!” Jenny yells, watching her brother run away as Penny rolls her eyes at such a vain attempt of an escape.

“Listen Jen, I’m doing this for your own good-” 

Benny flinches as he hears a loud thud, from what he can assume is coming from another punch, but he doesn’t have enough time to go back and help.

He skips a few flights of stairs by jumping down the center of the stairwell, sticking the landing before dashing off, running right into Denny and Kenny at the ground level as they stand waiting for the elevator.

He immediately tackles Denny with a hug, though it only lasts a few seconds before he pulls away, “we need to get out of here.”

“We know,” Denny gives their partner an uneasy glance, “we just got the message from Jenny, where she is?”

“Penny got her, we need to leave now”

Benny is cut off by the elevator dinging once again.

And Penny steps out, once again, this time with blood dripping down her nose, and a security guard holding Jenny back in restraints. She looks back to the guard and smiles, “see, I told you he wouldn’t get far.” She steps closer to Denny pointing her finger threateningly towards them like they were a misbehaving child, “now listen here, this robot needs to get to the robotics lab. If you don’t want to get thrown out like your wreckless sibling over here, I recommend you comply to the Administrator’s orders.”

Denny doesn’t get a chance to reply because Kenny kicks Penny in the knees. 

Benny shoots his arms up in the air as he shouts, “yeah! Go Kenny!” 

And in a flash he’s scooped up by Denny, apparently weight doesn’t really matter anymore if you have control of your anti-gravity powers, and the two rush to the lobby, leaving Kenny behind to try and stop Penny.

And they make it to the lobby, and Denny is trying to kick open the doors when they’re hit by a large metal stick, sending them flying back, and Benny to get tossed to the ground.

Benny scrambles to pick himself up, only to realize he’s being held back. He looks up to see he’s being held by the Administrator. 

“Bastard,” Benny does as a greeting, watching in the corner of his eye as he sees Penny walk in with Kenny and Jenny being restrained by the security guard, the traitor seems to be sporting a cut above her eye now, it looks like Kenny got a good fight in.

Denny is forced up and held back by Penny, “man these security guard Blue told us to get are pretty great, aren’t they sir-”

She’s cut off as apparently Benny had broken free from the administrator and had rushed to her, grabbing her by the throat, and for once, she was experiencing genuine fear. 

Everyone around the room watched in disbelief.

His grip grew tighter around her neck, but she managed to squeak out, “Basic Leveling Unit, cease operation and head to the robotics lab.”

His screen turns blank as he drops Penny to the ground and walks away, the shouts of his friends failing to reach him.

As he disappears the Administrator walks over to Penny, not offering to help her up, but simply looks down as he asks, “you could have done that this whole time?”

She feels a bead of sweat fall down her face as she glances over to Kenny and Jenny squirm against the security guards, “I could have… But… If I did, his little friends would have just stormed in and pulled him out before any research could be done, they needed to be dealt with first. Sir.”

“That’s acceptable, escort these individuals off the premises. Mr. Ink should be following shortly.”

Benny’s screen finally lights back up when he makes it to the robotics lab, greeted by a scene of Lenny yelling at two scientists in black lab coats and sunglasses.

“Well I told you guys to get lost, your credentials are fake and I don’t buy it for a second and- Benny?” Lenny looks over to see the cyborg standing in the doorway.

Lenny races to him but the sound of a loud click behind him, looking back he can see one of the fake scientist holding up a gun to him, “sir please step away from the cyborg.”

The astronaut is glancing between Benny and the Blacktron employees, squinting as he tries to figure out what to do, trying to figure out how this guy knows Benny isn’t just a robot.

“Please just leave Lenny,” Benny manages to get out, his voice starting to static out as he feels fear overtake him.

“Benny I’m not going to leave you.”

Two security guards enter the room, not surprised by the gun being held by the supposed scientist, and all Benny can do is shake his head, “listen Lenny you’re worth a whole lot more to me alive than dead. There’s nothing else we can do, we lost. Just leave before you get shot.”

Lenny looks ready to argue, but gives up. He lowers his head as he walks to the security guards, glancing back to Benny as he does so. Giving up, without a fight.

He can hear Benny struggle against his restraints as he’s tied to the lab table.

[Gore/horror imagery skip to [BRICKSBURG METROPOLITAN AREA, SEPTEMBER X, 202X] if you can’t handle this kinda stuff]

The space squad minus their most valuable member stand at the entrance of the parking lot for the HQ. The security guards had left to go back to the building, leaving Penny to watch over the group as she awaited the police to take them away.

They were all screaming at her, all except Lenny who remained silent as he looked at the ground. 

Their actions were halted when there was a loud piercing scream from inside the HQ and almost immediately an alarm from within started blaring.

The squad shot one another a look, knowing they needed to get back in, and all they rushed Penny, who scrambles to get a taser out. She’s able to slam Jenny in the back of the neck and jabs Kenny and Lenny in the side with the device before they can land a hit on her.

All of them fall motionless to the ground as she turns her attention to the last space squad member.

And she hits Denny right in the chest with the thing. She pulls back, expecting them to pass out. But eyebrows raise in surprise as they remain standing, and before she can react they’re able to grab the device from her, and jam it on her throat, lighting her up and causing her body to slump to the ground.

The astronaut looks back to their friends, all passed out, and sighs, hoping they’ll be fine. Denny doesn’t have time to worry about them, they need to get to Benny before it is too late.

They run as fast as they can back inside the headquarters, only to find the doors leading into the lobby locked. Looks like an emergency shut down had been called. 

Denny squints at the glass door, noticing it wasn’t particular that thick. And with a strong punch Denny had the thing shattered into several large shards of glass in a matter of seconds.

They jump through the door frame, taking notice that the place looks deserted. A phone dangling by its cord under the receptionist desk, papers scattered on the floor, it wasn’t hard to deduce all the employees ran into the underground bunker at the sound of the alarm. Though since it was a few weeks before the launch and the entire staff was present today it was probably exceeding capacity down there.

Denny ran through the halls, the utter silence of the place increasing their anxiety. Something serious must have gone down to cause this level of panic, but what could be so bad?

That question would soon be answered as the astronaut makes it to the robotics lab, kicking open the door only to freeze in horror.

One of the inspectors laid in a pool of blood on the floor, looking like they had a drill taken to their face, and the other, was motionless as it was held up by the neck by Benny.

The cyborg was standing there, holding the corpse up by the neck like he was a statue, a statue completely unaware of the blood gushing out from its side spilling onto the floor.

But the sound of someone walking into the room breaks him from his trance, he moves his head over to Denny so slowly, revealing his screen had been cracked down the middle, showing his skull to be visible.

Denny finds themselves backing up, trembling, not fully believing what they were seeing.

Then Benny drops the body.

And takes a step towards Denny.

Denny fights to say something, but their voice stays caught in their throat.

Benny raises out his hand, and the blank broken screen lights up with errors brightly before flashing off and turning onto it’s default mode, and he moves his head looking around, seeming confused as he speaks out, “Denny?”

But Denny doesn’t wait another second, speaking out, “Basic Leveling Unity, activate sleep mode.”

The machine falls to its knees, and his screen grows dark, as Denny approaches anxiously. 

They softly place a hand on top of the helmet, making sure he was fully deactivated. The scared astronaut glances back to the bodies in the back of the room.

They could feel tears form in the edge of their eyes as they look back down to their frozen sibling, there was nothing they could do, no way to erase this or pretend it didn’t happen. 

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop this, I should have-”

Benny would never hear what Denny was going to say, as a loud bang cut them off, and Benny was trapped helplessly frozen as their sibling collapsed to the ground next to them. 

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[BRICKSBURG METROPOLITAN AREA, SEPTEMBER X, 202X]

“And all I know is I’m hurt a lot, and I see all these people passing me by before my sight glitches out. The next time my view sensors come back online I’m being stuffed into a large wooden crate and taken away to some sort of secret government facility, and put away into this warehouse stuffed with miles upon miles of dangerous creations and relics meant to be forgotten to man-”

“Oh like Indiana Jones,” Rex can’t help but blurt out, cutting off the end of Benny’s story.

Benny looks over to Jenny, shaking his head as he asks, “am I supposed to know what that is.”

Jenny is currently pressing her hand on her chin as she has her eyebrows hunched in deep thought, looking up at the question, not quite catching it, “sorry what did you ask?”

Rex puts his hands down on his knees as he tries to explain, “it’s a movie series, I think it started in the 80s. In one of the movies it ends with the dangerous item being taken to Area 51, right Jenny?”

Jenny looks at a loss for words at that, and chooses to ignore him, focusing back on Benny, apparently confused by the end of his recap, “Benny, you made it sound like someone else came in and,” she moves her hands around as she tries to not say a certain word, “hurt Denny.”

“Well, that’s because someone did, I clearly remember some people walking in with guns, and Denny got shot by them-” Benny pauses himself, his screen going blank as he says that, “but they- survived the shot right? They’re okay now right?”

Jenny shakes her head looking to the ground, “that doesn’t make sense…”

Benny tilts his head, a question mark appearing on his screen, “what’s the problem?”

“Ben, you killed,” her voice gets choked up and she has to start again, “Benny that day, it was reported that you killed everyone in the facility. After taking out the two Blacktron scientists, you took out our sibling, and then headed into the facility’s bunker, and everyone in Classic Space got killed. Our squad were the only recorded survivors. Classic Space got shut down permanently after that.” 

“No, I wouldn’t, that doesn’t add up,” Benny looks over to Rex his screen flashing error signs as he begins to panic, “I couldn’t have done that!” His voice turns into glitched up static after that.

Rex takes Benny’s hand into his own, trying to calm him down, and it seems to work, the error screens fade away and the static grows quiet.

Eventually he’s able to talk again, “you thought I killed Denny? But I couldn’t- I didn’t have a gun on me! And- and you talked like Denny was still around, earlier, I thought you mentioned them-”

“I brought them back,” Jenny gives a little shrug, “Denny was the reason I got into necromancy, losing both of you in the span of a few hours really broke me back then. I wanted to do anything to get someone back, and you, being recorded as this hazardous super deadly machine, well you were going to be a lot harder to get back… So I brought Denny back to life and they got pissed at me for doing that. As for the gun thing, it was in the report that you took one off a security guard. Trust me, I read through that report,a lot.”

Benny shakes his head, black oil dripping through the cracks in his screen as he cries, “but, but the rest of the squad, they were okay?”

Jenny lets out a little sigh, leaning back, “they’re okay. Kenny and I were pretty tight but after he got married to Denny he stopped talking to me. And Lenny, he’s been doing pretty well. He’s the only one who’s still working in the public aerospace industry, and the only one I’m still talking to. He's been searching for wherever you were dragged off to. He never stopped looking for you.”

Benny gives a little squeeze to Rex’s hand after hearing that, but Rex is looking away. It wasn’t uncommon for soulmates to already have partners when they bond, but 30 years of unresolved romantic tension was not really a thing that popped up too much. 

And Rex could feel the slightest fear that Benny might want to go back to him.

“So uh, what happened Penny?” Benny finally asks after a long period of silence, the oil falling from his face slowly stopping, “is she still your soulmate?”

“Oh, it’s um,” Jenny mood completely shifts at that question, rubbing her hands nervously, “well I mean I still have her Fate String, so I think she’s technically alive, but uuuuh, I mean she’s kind of down stairs…”

Rex who had been zoning out, worrying about his potential love life tunes back in at that comment apparently getting what she was referencing, “oh my god, is that who that is?”

Jenny lets out a nervous laugh as she stands up, “listen I couldn’t just throw her out!”

Benny still holding onto Rex’s hand as he now stands up, using his free hand to rub the oil off his face, “I don’t get it, what are you guys talking about?”

Jenny lets out a little puff and walks towards the broken front door, “c’mon I’ll show you, I live a few doors down from here.”

“Wait, you live in the same complex as Rex?”

“I own this whole place, well the state owns this place, but I give rooms to the undead so they have a place to live and don’t attack the living.”

Benny and Rex follow Jenny until they make it to her place, which apparently has an unlocked front door. She just kicks it open before walking over to the fridge.

Rex is looking super unamused at the moment, but is still holding tightly onto Benny’s hand. Where as Benny is looking fairly confused, showing a face with raised eyebrows on his screen, “Jenny do you want another soda? Weren’t you going to show me- wHHA-”

Jenny opens the fridge to show a perfectly preserved corpse. In fact, one looking at it couldn’t even tell it was a corpse, just looked like someone had curled up and fell asleep in there, the only imperfection was a large scar running down the body’s forehead. And also, throughout the fridge were several organs lying around in tupperware.

“Lenny alerted me he found her when he was snooping around Blacktron for clues on you, so I showed up in my pickup truck and have just kept her around.”

Rex looks over to Benny and mutters, “your sister is really weird dude.”

Jenny pretends she didn’t hear that, “so like she’s not really dead, cause my Fate String still leads to her, and Fate Strings disappear upon death. And also her body is missing a brain so that’s weird. Oh and most of the organs in the fridge are yours, there the ones found by the police in your garage after you faked your death, and I kept them preserved by-”

“You kept my organs??? It’s been over thirty years Jenny???”

“Well I felt rude throwing them out.”

“You could’ve liked, buried them? Gave me a funeral?”

Rex lets out a snort, “funerals freaking suck dude, you’re not missing anything by not having one,” after adding to the conversation he moves closer to the fridge to poke Penny’s corpse before getting swatted away by Jenny as she closes the fridge.

Benny lets out a staticky sound that’s a poor excuse of a sigh, as he starts to look around the apartment. If the decor was anything to tell by, a lot of time had passed, the whole apartment was decorated in movie posters he’s never heard of and weird relics that he would have in the 80’s imagined Jenny owning.

His voice breaks through the static and he quietly asks, “so what now? I’m this dangerous outdated cyborg, what am I supposed to do?”

Rex, not one to handle tense situations, decides to take control, and swoops Benny off the ground and into his arms, “well Mr. Super Dangerous Cyborg, your soulmate is an incredible immortal dude who’s super hot and will help you do anything your heart desires. So, what do you want to do?”

Benny, whose screen is showing little blush marks at the moment, thinks for a moment, “I guess I would, just like to exist for a little while.”

Rex gives a small chuckle as he rubs his face against Benny’s, “existing is my speciality dude, I got you covered.”


	6. It’s Getting Lonely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A soft and short chapter where Rex and Benny figure out how they plan to get to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter to unwind after all the backstory stuff. Wrote it cause I kept thinking about ‘there’s only 1 bed’ trope and how Rex… only has 1 bed in his apartment.

Jenny spends a while asking for a few more details on Benny’s backstory before eventually giving him a hug as she heads out to do the graveyard shift of her job.   
  
As she’s getting ready to go, Rex explains it wasn’t actually a shift, she just went around every night to check the city's graveyards for any undead popping up.

She does wave goodbye to Benny and promises to see him first thing in the morning, before heading to the door. Rex waves her off and locks the broken door behind her, finally clasping his hands together as he turns back to Benny, who at some point in the last few minutes had found Rex’ office chair and was spinning himself around in it.   
  
“Okay so, it’s been an eventful night, but we should probably get to sleep,” Rex pauses himself after saying, watching his soulmate continue to spin around in the chair, “wait, do you need sleep?”   
  
“I can sleep, I just don’t need it,” Benny slows down his spins so he can focus back on Rex, “though it would probably be more important for me to charge. I have no idea how my batteries have any power right now.”   
  
“I thought you said you had a magical heart that keeps you alive.”   
  
“It keeps me alive but the rest of my body is still a big machine, it doesn’t run off of it, I mean at least I think it doesn’t. It’s been a few years since I’ve looked at my blueprints.”   
  
Rex takes the back of the office chair and starts pushing it towards his bedroom, “well let's go figure out how to charge you man.”   
  
Benny brings his knees up to his chest as he’s brought into the room, watching silently as Rex heads over to his work desk and starts pulling out wires.   
  
Rex grabs one and looks over to Benny, “okay, what kind of charger do you need? Can you take an USB? They had that in the 80’s right?”   
  
“I don’t know what that is man,” Benny gives a shrug finally standing up to walk over to Rex and taking the wire, “but I can make it work.”

“How’s that?”   
  
Benny holds the wire up to his screen, examining for a second and leaving Rex in the dark for what he was doing. He then takes his spare hand and points out a finger towards the cord. Slight metallic scratching noise came from it as the tip of it shifted around creating a perfect slot for the USB cord. And he plugs it in and gives a thumbs up Rex, “I tried to make myself pretty adaptable.”   
  
Rex looks down at the wire, taking Benny’s hand to study it, “how did you do that? Do you have some sort of shape shifting metal in your hand, or are there several layers on your fingers you can move around to format the size to any plug-in?”   
  
When he doesn’t get a response from Benny he looks back, to see the other showing a blushing face on his screen.   
  
Rex gives a puzzled look to him, still holding onto his hand as he asks, “you okay?”   
  
Benny takes his spare hand and attempts to cover his screen, “we’re holding hands…”   
  
Rex grows more puzzled as he glances back down to their intertwined hands, “We’re soulmates, I think we’re like, supposed to hold hands.”   
  
“But we’re like, holding hands, alone in your bedroom, this is like some romantic shit man.”   
  
“I mean again we are soulmates, we are probably supposed, to be romantic. So no need to be embarrassed by it.”   
  
Benny’s free hand slips away from his face, and his screen switches to a nervous expression, “but does anyone even know what soulmates really are? I mean what if the Fate String is really just for, super good friends and people misinterpret it as a symbol of romance. Or What, if fate Strings are really just randomly assigned and we just think they mean more than they do...”   
  
Rex rolls his eyes at that idea, “Fate Strings are just left over remnants of the Man Upstairs plotting stories for people.”   
  
“Say what now.”   
  
Rex waves his free hand around as he tries to figure out how to explain it, “like, we all exist as entertainment for the Man Upstairs. Or at least most people do, and he likes to create these stories for us to follow. We can choose to follow the destiny they have for us, or we can ignore it, and if there’s someone important in our destiny, we get attached to them through the Fate String. So like you had some sort of destiny that involved meeting me in the future, and we would’ve developed some kind of bond during our time together. But thanks to the string, we can sort of speedrun whatever we want to be.”

“Speed-what?”   
  
“Speedrunning, it’s a video game thing. I just mean, the Fate String said we were going to be together, so we can trust it.”   
  
Benny rubs the side of his arm, swiveling the chair just a bit as he grew nervous, “and you’re just going to trust this Man Upstairs? Trust that he knows we’re going to get along?”   
  
Rex sighs at that, giving away that maybe he wasn’t as confident about the whole thing as he’d been acting, “listen, honestly, I don’t really trust any of the beings Upstairs, but last time I blew off my soulmate, it really bit me in the ass. So, I want to trust that whatever bond we’re meant to have together is something good, something worth learning how to trust again for.”   
  
Benny lets out a static laugh at that, “man that’s pretty sappy of you. But uh, if you’re willing to trust it I guess I can too- BEEP.”   
  
Rex looks a little shocked from hearing Benny yell out the word Beep, but quickly relaxes with a smirk as he sees the blushing screen flash up on him, “what was that about?”   
  
“That’s the sound I make when I finish charging,” Benny unplugs the wire from himself wire, “the future has some fine electronics.”   
  
“We sure do, now I do want to get to sleep, so if you want to stay up I have a TV in the living room, or you can sleep on the couch-”   
  
“Can’t I sleep in here?”   
  
That seems to break Rex’s whole tough guy act, and he pulls away his hand as he looks around the room in a panic, “what, like in my bed? Together? I mean I don’t know.”   
  
“You literally just said we’re supposed to be romantic dude!”   
  
“But isn’t this moving a little fast?”   
  
“What’s fast about two dudes chilling in bed together?”   
  
That comment calms Rex down, and he lets out a small laugh, “well when you put it like that, I guess I can’t object.”

  
  


Rex disappears into the bathroom after that, re-emerging with dinosaur printed pajamas, and sits down on his bed.   
  
Benny was nervously swiveling side to side in the chair, not sure when he should get in.   
  
Rex can’t help but smile how cute that is, “you can come lay down, you know, we can just have some certified bro time, chilling in bed together.”   
  
“Alright,” Benny steps out of the chair and onto the bed before laying down on it and pulls the blanket that had Rex’s logo printed on it over him, “hey do you think like, cuddling is a certified bro time thing that could happen.”   
  
Rex blushes as he glances to the wall of the room, “I mean if you want it to be.”   
  
“I think it might be nice.”   
  
Rex lets out a puff of air as he smiles, giving in and pulling himself under the blanket and moves his arms to wrap them around Benny. And almost immediately as he does that his soulmate’s screen grows dim and z’s start scrolling past on it.

  
  


And the two of them got the best night sleep they had in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like the fic don't forget to leave kudos + comments if you want more.


	7. This Must Be What Love Would Have Felt Like

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys go on a date this chapter, and also figure out they're boyfriends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter for Act 2, setting stuff up before the final act. Another soft chapter.

Three months had passed since the two had first met. Life had become nicer, for the both of them, though Benny would argue that he didn’t really have a life before.

In an effort to try and prove he was a responsible and well-adjusted adult Rex had really started to fix up the apartment after Benny ‘moved in’. ‘Moved in’ is in quotes because he didn’t really have any belongings to ‘move in’. Jenny had explained anything he had previously owned while he was human was with Denny, and any of the few items he had during his Blue days were with Lenny. And Benny wasn’t feeling up to facing him just yet.

An alarm goes off early in the morning at 6:00AM sharp. A rock song blasting off Rex’s cellphone to signal another day of trying to awkwardly figure out how to be a couple between two affection starved people.   
  
“Rex turn off the alarmmmm,” Benny mumbles, trying to move to his side, but finds his arm is trapped under something heavy, his eyes slowly open, to see that a big robot is facing him. Oh wait, that was him.   
  
He takes his untrapped arm and places it on the helmet giving it a good shake, “Rexxxx wake up, we switched again.”   
  
The screen slowly flickers on and the default happy face shows up, “why does everything hurt?”   
  
“I just told you, we switched again man.”   
  
Rex lets out a static blip of a noise, looks a little startled that he made that noise, and then slowly sits up, “dude, this is the third month in a row. I don’t think it’s normal for us to switch this much.”

“Maybe we could ask for some help on this?”   
  
Rex carefully steps out of the bed, giving his robo-legs some practice bends, “I can figure this out myself, I just need some more time. So uh, should I get the screw-driver to get your screen off, get the kiss out of the way?”   
  
Benny’s hand scrunches up the blanket as his eyes dart to the ground, “well, I mean we could. But, I was wondering if it would be chill with you if I, I don’t know, stayed as you for a few hours.”   
  
Rex’s screen dims for a few seconds, before it flashes back on, brightly shining in the room, “dude, do you miss being human?”   
  
Benny is pulling pretty tight on the blanket right now, there was a tiny fear that he was going to break it as he felt his heart pulse loudly in his ears, which was a weird feeling to experience once again, “I don’t completely miss it. But I wanted to try to eat some food, and maybe go outside and feel the sun on my skin again. I don’t really remember what that feels like.”

Rex lets out a glitchy laugh, startles himself with the glitchy laugh, which after a few seconds past makes him laugh more, “well that’s pretty cute, tell you what, I’ll call in sick to work and we give you a whole day to be human.”

Benny smiles as he relaxes, jumping up and pulling Rex into a hug.   
  
Rex lets out a nervous robo-laugh as his on screen eyes glance to the side, “yes, hugging, this is nice.”   
  
Benny, unaware that Rex was starting to overheat from being nervous, pulls away from the hug and places a finger on the screen, doing an affectionate ‘boop’ as he talks, “so you ready to have an epic date night?”   
  
“Maybe I shouldn’t have taught you what that word means…” Rex manages to switch the screen to show an unamused face, “but yeah we’ll have a pretty great date, but we should probably get you ready.”   
  
Benny’s excited demeanor quickly melts away and he crosses his arms and lets out a little huff, blowing up some of Rex’s floofy hair, “ugggggh, but you have like an hour long morning routine. I don’t wanna have to do all that.”   
  
“Well you’re the one who wanted to be me, and being perfect doesn’t come easy man.”   
  
Benny let’s out another “ugggh,” as Rex takes his hand and leads him to the bathroom to get him ready.   
  
Rex gets to work on the morning routine, fixing up the hair, making sure the stubble is still looking good, uses some concealer to hide a few unappealing scars along his neck, and some contacts.   
  
“Rex?” Benny asks, taking the contacts from his soulmate to put them in himself.   
  
“Yes?” Rex asks, not sure what there was anything to be questioning right now.

“I just now realized, your eyes don’t naturally glow green. Are you wearing glow-in the dark contacts?”   
  
Rex switches the screen to show an angry face as he acts offended by that statement, “they’re not glow-in the dark, they’re nano-sized lights running on solar power.”   
  
Benny places them in, the contacts concealing Rex’s normal brown eyes completely, “okay that can’t possibly be a real thing.”   
  
“It is, the future is full of surprises dude.”   
  
Benny turns around and crosses his arms as he leans against the counter, “well, I don’t think you really need these contacts, your eyes are handsome enough as is.”   
  
Rex’s control of the screen is decimated by that statement, it turns off as he moves his hands to cover his face, trying to hide his emotions.   
  
Benny stifles a laugh as he gives a pat to his soulmate’s shoulder, it was adorable how this guy couldn’t handle genuine compliments at all, “so what are we wearing out today?”   
  
That question seemed to snap back Rex into reality, though the screen remained off as he focuses back on Benny, “well for you, I think rocking my classic vest and scruffed up jeans would work, and for me that oversized hoodie disguise we used last time we took you out into public. Since we’re still not sure if the government is hunting you down or not yet.”   
  
“Sounds hashtag,” Benny gives a thumbs up after saying, awaiting approval from Rex.   
  
“That’s not how that word is used but it was close, man, you just gotta add some cool word after hashtag.”   
  
“Oh so like, ‘that sounds hashtag epic’?”   
  
Rex lets out an angry static noise and Benny just laughs as he watches him storm off to the closet and grab their outfits for the day.

Benny eventually stops his laughing and wanders over to Rex, getting a good look at the closet. And something catches his attention, his arm brushes pasts Rex’s as he goes to grab a cowboy hat.   
  
He holds it, and then looks over to Rex, “so uh, cowboys huh?”   
  
Rex snatches it away and adds it to the clothes piled up in his arms, “that was from my cowboy phase. And for the record cowboys are pretty cool. And tough.”   
  
Benny lets out a soft laugh giving a pat to Rex’s back, “dude cowboys rock. Though I’ve always preferred sci-fi over westerns.”   
  
Rex tosses the hat onto his bed and hands Benny his outfit for the day, “you’re kind of a one note genre sort of dude, you need to branch out.”   
  
Benny walks over to the bed and puts on the hat, “fine I’ll be a cowboy today.”   
  
“That’s not what I mean, I mean like, you’re just- A lot of the stuff you talk about is space related, or some complicated technology explanation, or like some random sci-fi movie fact.”   
  
“I’m not one note,” Benny places the clothes under his arm, looking a little miffed, “I’m complex… I mean do you think I’m boring? I can try to be into other stuff if you want me to-”   
  
Benny is startled by Rex suddenly dropping the clothes he was holding to the ground to run over to his soulmate, placing a firm hand on his shoulder, “I was just uh joking, you’re really cool. All those space facts you tell me, I think they’re great, and like your enthusiasm,” Rex starts to say cute but cuts himself off and chooses a less mushy word, “it’s sexy.” Rex screen finally boots up after he says and a face of ‘ :| ‘ pops up, “I fucked that up.”   
  
Benny laughs again, and his eyes fall down to Rex’s hand resting on him, “you seemed to get real serious there for a second man.”   
  
Rex pulls away his hand as his screen returns to its default smiley face, “well, I just, really don’t want to make you feel bad for being you. Cause like then you might change, and I think you’re pretty great as is.”   
  
“Aww you think I’m great, and sexy!” Before Rex can clarify that at all, Benny dashes off to the bathroom to get changed into his outfit for the day.   
  
Rex grabs his clothes off the ground and starts to pull the oversized hoodie over his head, the expression on the screen one with slight concern. He knew giving this soulmate thing a shot was going to be hard, but why couldn’t this have happened back before he died, or before he tried to be a good guy again. Why’d Benny have to land in his life when he was mid-way through an identity crisis. 

Soon enough, Benny walks out of the bathroom, sporting a dark blue vest and the cowboy hat, happily showing off the combination, until his smile drops as he sees Rex sitting on the bed, hunched over with a frown on his face.   
  
Benny rushes over, sitting down on the bed next to him, “hey man, are you good?”   
  
The screen glitches out for a second as Rex looks over to Benny before the default face loads on, “oh yeah never better.”   
  
“Really cause you looked hypo-depresso there for a major second.”   
  
Rex waves his hand and lets out a small static laugh trying to buy his own charade of okayness, “yeah that just happens if I’m left alone with my own thoughts too long. Everyone’s like that.”   
  
Benny, having no proof to argue against that gives a little nod and stands, “well okay then, but for the record if you ever need to chill out and talk about your thoughts, I’m here for you. We can have a bro certified emotional chat. Just two homies who happen to be soulmates validating each other's existence.”

“Thanks, I’ll let you know if I ever want to do that,” Rex stands up after that, patting the non-existent dust off his knees before holding a hand out to Benny, “now, how about we go let you enjoy your real-boy day?”

Benny takes his hand, with a slight blush rising to his cheeks, being able to feel physical contact like this, even through Rex’s own mechanical hands, was a lot to process, “yeah…” His voice comes out quiet as he’s pulled outside by Rex.

But as they make it to the parking lot, Rex stops looking over to his jeep and then to Benny, “I don’t think I can drive as you, do you think you’ll be able to drive?”   
  
Benny jumps up and down at that question, with Rex having to grab him by his shoulder and pull him back down, “yeah man!! I’m great at driving, though it’s been a few years since I’ve been able to actually get behind the wheel, you know the rest of the squad were always really nervous to let me drive cause one time I ran over Kenny, but he ended up fine! Wasn’t even that hurt, only had a broken arm, like you think if you hit a guy on the highway he’d get more damaged than that, but nah the whole squad is pretty sturdy.”   
  
Rex has the screen’s expression blink a few times as Benny lets out that scramble of words. He got most of that, and from most of that he concluded he should not let Benny drive his car, “okay well, we can leave by taking Jenny’s car. That way I won’t be two upset if something happens to it.”   
  
Rex walks over to the white truck in the parking lot, Benny following looking a bit lost, “don’t we need to ask her first? I mean we don’t have the keys and hot wiring a car can damage it!”   
  
But Rex simply places a hand underneath the front of the car pulling out a magnetic box, “nah we gucci, I know where she keeps her spare.”   
  
“Oh wow,” with his worries subsided, Benny heads over to the driver’s side of the car taking the box from Rex, “from the way you talked about her I figured you weren’t friends, but I guess I was wrong.”   
  
Rex starts to refute that, cause he still feels like he doesn’t ‘do friends’. But Benny was definitely some kind of friend, and he wanted to try to be more trusting to try to accommodate Benny and his emotions into his life, so the screen flashes a happy face with closed eyes as he replies, “I guess you were. I mean I guess, she is a friend.”

Benny seems pleased by that response and unlocks the car. He gets in, waits for Rex to buckle up, and asks, "so where we headed?"

Rex kicks some loose receipts on the floor below him as he shrugs, "depends on what you want to eat, any food you particularly miss?"

"I miss ice cream the most. And like I mean real ice cream, not the so-called astronaut ice cream!! Like we never even brought that stuff to space man, you want to know what we really ate in space? We ate mac and cheese, Kenny made and it was pretty okay."

Rex lets out a static snrk at that, "well thanks for science lesson professor space," he stops himself, the fear from earlier returning that he might offend his soulmate by saying it like that, "I appreciate you informing me on this subject, so ice cream? There's a good place down Octan Boulevard near the state aquarium, we can head there."

Benny starts up the car and checks the mirrors as he gives Rex a thumbs up, "alright I'll just need you to direct me there."

"I can do one better," Rex pulls out his phone from the hoodie's big pocket and puts into a little holder on the dashboard, quickly typing in the address, "in the future we have GPS technology so robots can tell us how to get to places."

Benny leans in to get a close look at the phone as a map pops up, "so your portable cellular phone also works as a map? And it has artificial intelligence in it?"

Rex waves his hand in a 'kind of' motion at that, "what the common consumer gets isn't like, cool artificial intelligence, it's all simple algorithms to find the easiest way to get to route A to route B. The cool sci-fi levels of artificial intelligence are all owned by the government, I know the whole secret police division is run by robots now, and they're trying to move out said bots onto local units as well."

Benny backs the car up and turns onto the major road, following the directions on the device, "how do you know about the secret police?"

"I kind of was on the run from them during my whole save the world thing. Got a couple of gnarly scars from them."

"Oh yeah, your whole chosen one backstory that slightly changes every time you retell it."

"I don't change it."

After breaking at a red light Benny looks over with a raised eyebrow, "okay well every time you omit different parts of it. Every time you tell it, something's different."

Rex hits the back of his head against the headrest as Benny continues to the ice cream shop, "I don't mean to do that. There's just boring stuff in the story, don't want you to worry about those details."

"Rex you don't have to worry about me getting upset over any details you know."

The tired undead guy trapped in his cyborg soulmate’s body doesn’t talk for a few minutes after Benny says that.   
  
Eventually Rex does talk again, though his voice at a much lower volume output, “I don’t think I can be completely emotionally honest. Not just with you, but like with anyone.”   
  
Benny glances at the GPS, it looks like they were getting close now, “why do you say that?”

“I’m-” Well he was afraid, but he didn’t like using that word, “I don’t think I can handle anyone growing bored with me. Hating me, that’s fine, but like pity? Or indifference? That shit hurts.”   
  
Benny pulls into the parking lot of the outdoor shopping mall, his mind racing as he tries to figure out how to say something nice but not super mushy, “I’m sorry you’ve been hurt so much you’re scared to be ignored.”

The car slowly comes to a halt as it’s parked, and Rex is looking over to Benny with his screen blank.   
  
Benny takes the keys out of the ignition as he looks over, worried that he said the wrong thing, “you good dude?”   
  
Rex snaps back into reality, the default face lighting up under his hood, “yeah I’m good. That was just a, real nice bro thing for you to say.”

“Glad to know we’re both too emotionally repressed to be able to communicate our feelings properly,” Benny states as he opens up his door, looking over to see Rex had already gotten out and was tapping his foot impatiently. Benny rolls his eyes as a small smile works its way on his face. And so he makes sure his cowboy hat is on tightly and grabs the cellular phone / electronic map, and gets out of the car.   
  
And the two are off, Rex leading the way as they search for the ice cream shop. Both are unsure why so many people are staring, either the guy in a weird construction vest and cowboy hat was attracting onlookers, or the guy with some sort of glowing hoodie was attracting attention. 

But despite the two standing out, nothing gets in their way, and they make it to the shop.

Rex slows down and holds the door open for his soulmate, and Benny gived a dorky smile as he walks in, rushing over to the display case at a speed that startles the underpaid employee working behind the counter.   
  
Benny stares at them all for the long time, before sadly looking over to Rex, “dude, how am I supposed to choose??? I can’t remember what any of these taste like.”

Rex doesn’t seem concerned by Benny’s plight, as he simply snags his wallet out of Benny’s jeans, and leans against the glass of the ice cream cooler, “hey so, get us one of every flavor,” then realization hits Rex as he realized all that ice cream was going into his body, “but make them small sized please.”   
  
The tired employee complies and starts to scoop out twenty small bowls of ice cream, and Benny grabs Rex’s side as he brings him into a tight hug, “holy shit, this is like a hundred dollar worth of ice cream! Are you sure about this?”   
  
“Yeah man, I’ll just need to work a little harder at the gym the next few days to work it off, no biggy.”   
  
Benny’s giddiness was still there as he let out a little laugh, “no I mean, the hundred dollars. This is a lot of money to blow on ice cream.”   
  
“Yeah well I’m rich, we’ve been over this,” Rex gives a shrug as he breaks from Benny’s hug, walking over the cash register and sliding down his custom printed credit card, a cute little design of tiny raptors floating against a galaxy background.   
  
Benny starts to take some of the ice cream cups the exhausted employee is handing him, moving them over one by one to a nearby table, “yeah but like, where does your money come from? Aren’t you still paying for college as you work towards your doctorate in archeology?”   
  
“I blackmail the president for money.”   
  
“Wuh huh?” Benny almost drops one of the ice cream cups on the floor at that statement, not really sure what to make of that, “like the  _ president _ president? The one who runs the country???”   
  
“Yeah that’s the guy, dudes a billionaire so it’s not like he’s hurting from not having the money,” the confused employee finally finishes handing Benny the last of the ice cream and takes Rex’s card as they ring him up.   
  
Benny sits down at the table with his ridiculous amount of ice cream, “are you going, to elaborate more on the whole blackmailing thing?”   
  
Rex takes his receipt and pulls up a chair to join Benny at the table, “President Business’s voter popularity would plummet if it was revealed I was alive. So I stay under the radar, and he gives me money. After his ‘take over the world’ thing a few years back he can’t handle any bad publicity.”   
  
Benny blinks a few times trying to parse through all those words, “wait is the evil Lord Business in your recounts of saving the world the same as President Business, who is still currently in charge of this country? And if so, WHY the heck has he not been kicked from office?”

“He is the same, and he can’t be kicked out cause before him, President Notarobot fucked up the whole three branches of government, gave pretty much total control to whoever sits in the oval office.”   
  
“Oh dang that is pretty fucked up,” and without anything to add, Benny gets started on his ice creams, working his way through all the flavors.   
  
And Rex watches, happy to have a screen right now instead of his face, otherwise he would be showing a dreamy like stare as he watches Benny ramble on how cows couldn’t be brought into space even if they were to provide a steady source of calcium for the astronauts.

“Like if we got cows up there we could make real ice cream- oh hey this flavor is good, which one is it?”    
  
Rex’s screen glitches a few times as he refocuses his attention, and leans closer to get a look at the one Benny was holding, “I think that one is cotton candy with gummy sharks in it.”   
  
Benny scarfs down the rest of the light blue ice cream and slams down the cup, “that one is great! We should get some to take home!”   
  
“And what about the rest of the flavors on the table?”   
  
“Oh uh,” Benny looks over to the teenage employee who’s busy on their phone, “hey do you want to eat all these?”   
  
“What?” The employee looks up confused, they didn’t know what to make of that question.   
  
“Did you want to eat the ice creams I haven’t tried yet, you look like you could use an ice cream break.”   
  
“Oh, I don’t think I’m supposed to do that.”

Rex interjects into this conversation, “yeah but he’s the customer, and the customer’s always right.”   
  
The employee shrugs hopping over the counter and starts working through the ice cream.   
  
Benny laughs, “well you were convinced fast.”   
  
The employee is too busy eating ice cream to respond.    
  
And similarly, Rex was too busy picking up a container of cotton candy ice cream from the freezer at the front of the store to pay attention to what Benny was talking about. He grabs one of the little portable coolers, putting the ice cream in it, and drops off of a fifty dollar bill by the cash register, “yo keep the change man, Benny are you good to go?”   
  
Benny hops up from the table responding with a, “yep!” And gives a little wave to the thankful employee before dashing out the store, leaving Rex to rush out after him.

Luckily the ex-astronaut doesn’t head out too far, just far enough to get some sunlight as he stands on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips.   
  
“So what do you want to do now,” Rex asks, causing Benny to look back at him and clasp his hands together.

“I don’t know!” Benny says with a lot more eagerness than those words are normally spoken with, “what’s close by for us to do?”   
  
“The aquarium’s within walking distance from here.”

“Oh!!! I haven’t been to an aquarium in… However long ago I was 14, let’s go!”   
  
And before Rex can process what’s going on, Benny scoops him up in his arms bridal style, “DUDE what are you doing?” Rex tries to cover his screen with his hands, but Benny can make out the blush appearing on his screen from under the hood.   
  
“You always get to carry me, thought I return the favor for once.”   
  
Rex curls up a bit, moving his hands away from his face to move them to hold on to Benny, “alright but if you drop me I’m going to be so pissed.”   
  
“Hey language,” Benny gives Rex a little bounce as he starts walking towards the Aquarium.

“Pissed isn’t a curse word, anyways you curse all the time.”   
  
“Come one it’s totally a curse word, you wouldn’t go to your boss and say you’re pissed off.”   
  
“Sure I would, but I’m not a coward.”

“Fair enough,” Benny gives a shrug, not having any reason to disagree.

  
  


The rest of the walk there was uneventful, as Rex carefully held onto the ice cream cooler and Benny just enjoyed the walk.   
  
The person at the ticket booth seemed surprised to see this guy walk up with a mysterious hooded figure in his arms and ask, “two tickets please!”   
  
But the person wasn’t being paid slightly above minimum wage to stare blankly at a weird couple and quickly starts going into their standard spiel, “okay, for two tickets it will be 56 dollars, and for an extra 40 dollars you can upgrade a ticket to include a private tour.”   
  
“Oooh tours, what kind do you have?”   
  
“There’s the penguin to-”   
  
“PENGUINS?” Benny looks excitedly down to Rex who’s still in his arms, the ex-astronaut bouncing up a little as he speaks, “dude I love penguins, do you think we could do that?”   
  
Rex gives a shrug, willing to do anything that would make Benny happy, “eh, go for it man.”   
  
Benny looks back over the person behind the glass window, “two penguin tours please!”   
  
The aquarium types something into their computer, shaking their head as they look at the screen, “seems there’s only one slot available for the tours today. Though I can see if there’s room for both of you tomorrow.”   
  
“Just one is fine,” Rex speaks up, getting a surprised look from Benny but before his soulmate can protest he explains, “todays supposed to be your special day, and I don’t really care that much about penguins. Like they think they’re so great just cause they don’t fly, big whoop, I don’t fly and I don’t get any awards.”

Benny gives a laugh at that, finding Rex’s irrational anger at the flightless bird pretty amusing, “okay, so two tickets to the aquarium, and one penguin tour upgrade.”   
  
  


The payment goes through successfully, and Benny finally places Rex on the ground, and runs to the door to hold it open for him before Rex has the chance to do the same.

Rex lets out a glitched out snrk as he gives a little bow thanking Benny as he walks in.

Once making sure his soulmate made it in safely, Benny walks in behind him, and takes his hand. Rex looks away from Benny, the blush reappearing on his screen.   
  
“What’s wrong, I thought hand holding was no big deal?”   
  
Rex mutters back, “yeah, when we’re alone. But there’s other people here, what if they see us.”   
  
“Oh, well then they might be jealous they’re not holding hands with a hunk like you.”   
  
Rex looks back over to Benny and gives him a playful punch on the shoulder with his free hand, “dude that’s pretty gay.”   
  
And that makes Benny halt in his tracks, giving Rex a serious look, “dude I am gay. Have you not known this?”   
  
_ Aw fuck,  _ Rex thinks, “no like, that’s a joke thing. Like the joke is we are gay, or you’re gay and I’m bi, and we’re being affectionate.”   
  
“I still don’t really follow.”   
  


Rex looks around the room trying to find something to change the topic, “heeey look the sharks are over here, let's go see them before your penguin tour!”   
  
Benny lights up at that, the previous topic fizzling away at the back of his mind, “oh that sounds great!”

Rex leads the way as they both head down the hallway to the shark tank, passing all sorts of small tanks on their way there.    
  
They go by sea horses, garden eels, spiny lobsters, without much of a glance, but as they walk by the moon jellies’ tank, Benny tugs on Rex’s hand signaling he wants to stop.   
  
Benny walks closer to the tank as Rex gives a slightly confused look, just following his boyfriend as he got lost watching the little sea creatures slowly bounce around their tank like a DVD screen saver logo.

Rex ventures a question to check on him, “Ben, you okay?”   
  
“Benny,” his soulmate sighs, breaking his gaze away from the jellyfish to smile at Rex, “I don’t really like my name shortened, and yeah I’m okay. I just, remembered these guys from when I was a kid.”   
  
“You remembered jellyfish?” Rex asks, not really following the logic of that.   
  
“No like,” Benny leans back, looking at the ceiling, “when I came to the aquarium as a kid. Dumb parents had some corporate event hosted here, and just told me and my siblings to fuck off and stay away from them the whole night. And I wandered over to the jellyfish exhibit, and seeing these glowing little floating guys got me all mesmerized. I spent the whole night just watching them. I think- That I really wanted to get in the tank with them, feel like I was floating around in the sky surrounded by twinkling stars,” he lets out a laugh as he blushes, glancing back over to Rex.   
  
And he’s caught off guard by Rex looking at him with a slight blush on his screen, his soulmate giving his hand a bit of a squeeze as he talks, “guess space has always been important to you.”   
  
Benny laughs again, and he finds himself unable to look away from the screen even if he wanted to hide his blush from Rex, “it’s always been something that I knew was meant for me, like it held a piece of my destiny. I might not have known the words to describe it when I was younger, or realized how important it was to me, but looking back I can see all the puzzle pieces.”   
  
Rex tilts his head a bit, the blush fading but the smile on the screen grows softer, “well that’s life, we’re just given a bunch of broken pieces and try to figure out what the whole picture is.”   
  
“Yeah,” Benny looks back to the tank in front of them, studying the circular jellyfish as they move slowly around their tank, “sometimes I just wish I could go back and like give my younger self a good shake and tell them they’re normal. And while I’m at it, maybe tell them to not make the same mistakes I did.”   
  
Rex makes a loud static coughing noise at that, his screen displaying a nervous face at that statement.

Benny’s head slowly looks back to his soulmate, and he raises an eyebrow as he questions that behavior, “you good fam?”   
  
Rex tries to wave his hand, but forgets Benny’s holding onto it so he just shakes both of their fists, “yeah, that’s just a weird thing to say.”   
  
“Really?”   
  
Rex, making sure to use his free hand this time, rubs the back of his head, “I mean, I think trying to change the past, would just suck. If anything in the past would change, then you wouldn’t be who you are now, you wouldn’t be where you are now.”   
  
“But I could be someplace better,” Benny cringes a bit at that statement, realizing he might offend Rex a bit with it, “being here with you is great, but if there was a way for us to meet without so many strings attached, wouldn’t that be nice?”   
  
Rex gives a shrug, looking down the hall as he lets out a synthetic sigh, “do you still want to see the sharks?”   
  
“Yeah let’s go,” Benny was starting to pick up on Rex always changing topics when he was uncomfortable.

The not-quite-a-couple-yet makes their way to large glass walls looking into the shark tank. Rex leads Benny over to one the benches in the center of the room, and the two sit as they take in the room around them.   
  
Benny looks at the coral reef inside, wondering if it was real, and given how many smaller fish seemed to be occupying and swimming around it, it was probably real. There were all sorts of colorful underwater plants in the habitat, the rays of sunlight shining into the tank to give it some really relaxing vibes.

The two sit in silence for a while, just enjoying the ambiance of the quiet aquarium in the early morning.

Eventually Benny breaks it, eyes on the tank, looking out for a shark, “are we at the right tank? I can’t freaking see any of the sharks.”   
  
“You’re a cyborg just put out some sparks to attract them to the glass.”   
  
Benny’s relaxed vibes are shattered and he looks over to Rex to give a bewildered look, “what?”   
  
Rex pulls his hand away from Benny’s as he points to the tank with both of his hands, “sharks! They have electroreceptor organs used to detect prey, much like how it’s suggested the plesiosaur had.”   
  
Benny just once again asks, “what.”   
  
“The plesiosaur man, they were giant aquatic dinosaurs that existed for 137 million years before they went extinct due to the K-T event! While their long stiff necks might make it seem like they would have trouble hunting they sure must have been able to do it for a long time, which raised the question how, which lead the theories that in those long necks were some electrogenic organs, the longer the neck the more stacks of electrolytes it could hold and the larger electric field it could create. Like a giant underwater electric dinosaur isn’t that so cool-” 

Rex stops himself as he hears beeping, and looks down to his chest, placing his hand over the robotic shell protected by the oversized hoodie, “I think this heart is having some problems.”   
  
Benny, smirking, places his hand over Rex’s, holding it against the beeping heart, “that’s what it usually does when I get too excited explaining something. I mean it’s usually space related, but it seems dinosaur excitement triggers it too.”   
  
“Oh, sorry I lost my cool there, I just wanted to share some cool plesiosaur facts.”   
  
Benny lets out a small laugh, “dude why are you apologizing that was like super hot.”   
  
“Wuh?”   
  
Benny leans closer, looking pretty smug at the moment, “a really like a man who can spout off random scientific facts off the top of his head.”    
  
Rex’s screen blinks off as his heart beeps pick up in frequency, and Benny hovers ever so closer,  brushing his thumb along the screen just like he remembered Lenny used to do.

That thought hits him like a live wire and he jumps up, moving so fast he seems to startle Rex out of his bi-panic.   
  
“WELP WOULD YOU LOOK AT THE TIME,” Benny says at much higher volume than is needed, “I SHOULD BE LEAVING TO GET TO THE TOUR! MEET YOU BACK HERE!”

Before Rex can so much as ask him a question he runs off.

  
  
  


Benny keeps running until he’s sure he’s out of sight of Rex, leaning down to catch his breath.  
  
 _‘Come on man get a grip, so you you really like you’re soulmate, you’re supposed to!’_ He tries to calm himself down as he looks back at the way he came, worried about how he left Rex alone, _‘So you still like Lenny, but it’s been over thirty years! He’s probably moved on, he might even be married right now. You can’t just expect a guy to wait around all those years for you.’_ _  
_  
He looks down at his hands and curls them up into fists, _‘you would know if you just went to see him. If you could just stop being a coward-’_

His downward spiral is momentarily halted by some sort of short musical jingle. He then remembers how cellphones work and pulls it out, seeing a text from Jenny.

[TEXT MESSAGE 10:11 AM]

Jenny: Rex you totally dipped on feeding this morning, you were supposed to handle the crew, now I have to deal with this before they destroy the sofa again.   
  
[TEXT MESSAGE 10:30 AM]   
  
Jenny: Rex where the hell is my car.   
  
[TEXT MESSAGE 10:32 AM]

Rex: Jenny, it’s me Benny! Funny story we switched again and then I thought it might be nice to do human things, so I think we’re on a date right now.

Jenny: You guys switched again? Dude I don’t think it’s supposed to happen every month. We really need to figure out what's going on with you guys.    
  
Jenny: Also bring back my car.   
  
Rex: After the penguin tour!!!    
  
Rex: And I think… I know what’s going on, there’s just something wrong mechanically with me that needs fixing. I don’t exactly have the blueprints to myself anymore, so it’s going to be hard to fix.

Rex: We can talk more about this after my penguin tour!!! I wanna see if I can smuggle a bird out of here in my cowboy hat.   
  
Jenny: Alright I have no idea what any of that means but you do you man.

  
Benny puts away the phone, the small electronic conversation was enough to calm him down. And now that he was calm, he pulled out his tour pass, checking for the location to go for that, and headed towards it.

  
  
  


Back on the bench, Rex sits alone, staring at a shark that had finally shown up.

_ ‘Am I interpreting this wrong? Are we not dating?’ _ Rex’s head was full of thoughts he didn’t have the answers to at the moment,  _ ‘I mean neither one of us has said I love you yet, but we like, sleep together, we hold hands. What if he doesn’t like me, what if he’s only humoring me because we’re soulmates and the feels bad-’ _

“Unikitty ye need to be slowing down!”   
  
Rex’s head snaps around so fast his hood falls down, catching a young adult with bright pink hair running past him through the aquarium.   
  
“There’s no time MetalBeard! Puppycorn ate like 16 tubs of ice cream!!! He’s gonna burn the store down during his sugar high!!! Oh why’d I think teaching him what arson was a good idea???”

The young girl disappears out of sight after saying that, and Rex is frozen in place as he hears MetalBeard clunk in.   
  
The cyborg pirate shakes his head seeing that Unikitty was already gone, “that lass moves as fast as- Blue?”   
  
MetalBeard has turned his head, and his good was staring directly at Rex. Or his old pal Blue, from his perspective.

But Rex isn’t processing that right now, he’s not processing much of anything, he’s stuck, staring at one of his old so called friends.   
  
He’s not feeling angry, he worked out his anger towards them, understanding that it was just the fate of the cruel universe that wronged him and not directly the fault of the people involved. But last time he tried to talk to one of his old friends after the whole super villain thing she threatened to rip his arms off. Which like when your ex-soulmate says something like that to you, it hurts a little.   
  
So that pain from his super botched encounter with Lucy is what’s taking up the majority of his mind right now as MetalBeard approaches him.   
  
The old guy is looking down at the dimly lit blanked screen cyborg, unsure if what he was seeing was true.   
  
Rex does an attempt to do a deep breath, but without proper lungs he just makes a weird glitched up sound file noise. But that was enough to get him back in the moment, and analyze the situation.   
  
Benny had mentioned he knew MetalBeard, MetalBeard had spotted him and thinks he’s Benny, or how he knew him in the 80’s, Blue. And he doesn’t know he’s Rex right now, so he should be safe from any consequences for his actions back in the city’s abandoned subway tunnels.

Rex stands up, his screen turning bright as he pulls up the default happy face, and swings his arm in a friendly motion. All he needed to do was speak like Benny, throw in some 80’s slang-   
  
With that thought he can feel something triggered from inside the helmet, like something tickling his brain as he hears a robotic voice internally speak out to say, “activating hip urban speech mode.”   
  
“Right on dude! It’s mega mad to see you here. It’s been hella long since I last saw you homeboy, you be looking fresh and bombdiggity!”

Rex had never felt such dread in the last few months, MetalBeard almost stepped back in shock, not expecting that to be what his old friend responded with.   
  
And Rex, he grabs his head, trying hard to not shake as he yells at the voice, “yo dude, this isn’t ill! Scratch up this narbo slang filter, this is bogus right now.”   
  
The internal voice speaks out again, ‘understood, activating Basic Leveling Unit standard operating procedure with limited free-will protocols’.   
  
“Yo dog did you just say limited free-will-”   
  
Rex can feel a painful shock travel to his brain, leaving him with an unpleasant tingling feeling.   
  
His screen turns black for a moment before he boots back up.   
  
He tries to speak out, to just say hi and he needs to go, “Greetings, I’m the Basic Leveling Unit running on my third generation software. I should not be here.”   
  
MetalBeard is looking pretty concerned right now, and places a hand on Rex’s shoulder, “Blue, do you recognize me?”   
  
Rex, internally was screaming, but there was something blocking him from having full control of the body he was in, and it was honestly, bringing back some bad memories, “of course, you’re registered user MetalBeard! Is there anything I can assist you with today? Ple ase hel p thissss is hell.”   
  
Rex gets a bit of relief realizing he can at least get a glitched out message at the end of pre-programmed responses.

“Hmm,” MetalBeard thinks for a moment, taking in the response he was just given, “now it’s been a long while since I’ve seen ya laddy but I do remember you getting stuck like this a few times. Ye’ usually had ‘ur family fix it for ye if I be recalling correctly.”   
  
“Registered user Denny does have access to deactivate standard operating procedure. Aaaaa,” Rex doesn’t get a full word out that time, just a string of mental keysmash. He had no clue what to do, if he waited for Benny to get back to fix him MetalBeard would just start a fight cause he’s Rex. And if he left with MetalBeard he would have no way to let Benny know where he’d went, effectively abandoning his soulmate here.    
  
Though he could track him through his fate string, hopefully at a point after he’d gotten away from MetalBeard to avoid the two meeting up.   
  


“Arggh,” MetalBeard says, thinking again, and Rex internally laughs at that. He had forgotten how stereotypically pirate MetalBeard really was, like as into the whole aesthetic as Benny was into his 1980’s robotic sci-fi character. Probably helped them get along. Man it was almost like if Benny hadn’t been locked in a government facility he would have fit right in his old gang.  Fit more in than lil forgettable Emmet ever did.

  
“How I be seeing it, maybe I could take ye to Denny’s,” MetalBeard mused, his mechanical hand stroking his mechanical beard, “have ‘em fix ye up good as new, their first mate Kenny still be holding onto lots of scientific equipment if I ain’t mistaken…”   
  
“Meeting up with Denny and Dr. Donatello, would be great, they can take me right back to HQ, where I belong! Yes l et’s go nnnn ow.”

“Alrighty laddy, I’ll get ye fixed up, let me just ask for their address in this master builder group chat,” MetalBeard pulls out an o(ctan)Pad, which makes sense, a normal touch screen phone would probably be too small for him. He types something into the screen and then looks over at Rex, “oh do ye know what a groupchat even be? How long have ye been back from the dead.”   
  
“The Basic Leveling Unit had been rebooted 3 months ago after dying in 1991.”   
  
His screen flickers as he responds with that, not really expecting that response. He thought Benny had just been asleep, not realizing this mechanical body had counted it as ‘dying’.   
  


“Two years after ye disappeared huh, where ye been staying Blue?”   
  
“Astronaut Jenny has been supervising me since the system awoke.”   
  
MetalBeard screen lights up as he gets the message, he reads it and gives a little nod to Rex, “I got the address, let’s be getting ye to ‘ur sibling and then get ye back to your other one. Ye didn’t come here with anyone did ye?”   
  
Rex can hear the heart skip a beep as he worries the automated response will rat him out, but luckily it responds, “I did not arrive with any registered users.”   
  
“Alrighty then,” MetalBeard then reaches down and picks Rex up, slinging him over his shoulder like he’s a bag of grapes. People carry bags of grapes over their shoulders right? That wasn’t like, just a weird thing only Rex did?   
  
  


***

The drive to Denny’s place didn’t take too long, but it felt like forever as Rex tried to dissolve into his seat. MetalBeard kept trying to make conversation, bringing up what he’d been up to in the last thirty years. But Rex just let the automated responses take over, not wanting to put in the mental energy to fight it and also just doesn’t want to talk to MetalBeard.

As the large pirate themed truck pulls into the driveway, Rex can feel his heart beep loudly as he starts to panic over the fact of  _ ‘oh fuck I’m going to see Benny’s sibling, the one who hasn’t seen him in thirty years. The one that died the last time they saw him. This might have not been the best option.’ _

MetalBeard seems to be unaware of the beeps loudly emanating from Rex, stepping out of the car.   
  
And without much protest from the protocols filtering his every action, Rex follows, and walks up to the front door of this colorful house in this bright and peppy neighborhood where everything was so stupidly colorful-   
  
_ ‘Oh man upstairs we’re in Neo Cloud Cuckoo Land,’ _ he internally grumbles, having a lot of disdain for the whole place. It was filled with too many fake smiles and dumb people who pretended life was great, when it wasn’t.

But his hatred for the place was pushed aside as he hears MetalBeard ring the doorbell, and almost instantly, the door flies open, and on the other side is someone he recognizes as Denny. He’s not sure if it’s just context that he recognizes them or the internal processing unit in his head telling him who it is, but he’s pretty sure that the person in the red shirt floating a few inches off the ground staring at him in disbelief is Benny’s sibling.

He feels bad as they rush out and pull him into a hug, knowing he doesn’t deserve this.   
  
Denny quickly breaks from the hug and pulls him inside, “Benny I can’t believe you’re alive. Oh man when Kenny said he got the text from MetalBeard I almost didn’t believe him, I mean I assumed Lenny would let us know the second he found you, when did he find you, does he know you’re glitching out?”

“Registered User Mr. Ink current location is unknown,” is the output Denny gets as they lead Rex to the sofa, sitting him down.   
  
The living room is decorated with all sorts of racing memorabilia, seems like Denny was a big race car fan. 

Denny’s eyebrows lower as they worry over that response, “Benny, you didn’t have a complete factory reset did you?” The ex-astronaut quickly snaps around, focusing on MetalBeard, “what was he like when you found him?”   
  
“He be acting a bit off, starting saying a bunch of outdated slang before jumping deck and acting all professional.”

Denny looks back over to Rex, the concern moving to confusion, “sounds like you just got your work filter on Benny, why don’t you turn it off, you have control of that.”   
  
“Basic Leveling Unit is not supposed to change the filters without user input.”   
  
Denny seems to pick the higher paced heart beeps after that, confusion becoming something more distrustful, “Basic Leveling Unit, deactivate all filters.”   
  
Rex can feel the tingling sensation wash away from his brain, and he lets out a glitched out noise variation of a sigh in relief, “thank you,” he says, his shoulders lowering as he relaxes.   
  
“Well now that you’re fixed, how about you tell why you didn’t know how to deactivate that.”   
  
Rex’s on screen eyes dart to the side of the room, not directly looking at Denny who is staring intently, “well, funny story about that, I’m not Benny,” he instantly has Denny snatch the scruff of his hoodie and pull him closer, looking ready to do some damage, “I’m his soulmate!!!”   
  
That causes Denny to drop him in surprise, and MetalBeard to let out a gasp, like he’s watching a soap opera.    
  
“Lenny?” Denny asks, causing Rex to groan.   
  
“No, I’m not Lenny, much to everyone’s disappointment.”   
  
Denny squints down at Rex as the cyborg picks himself off the floor and adjusts his hoodie, “do you know where Benny is now?”   
  
“He’s at the aquarium, we were... “ Rex stops himself from describing it as a date, cause he wasn’t quite sure himself if it was classified as one, “I wanted to give him at least a day of being human. So he was using my body to have fun, and I was just going to go along in his. He never mentioned that I might lose some free-will with it though.”

Denny doesn’t seem to care too much about Rex’s personal problems, “so he’s still at the aquarium?”   
  
“Yeah?”   
  
“Kenny!” Denny yells leaning towards the kitchen to yell at their spouse, “I need you to drive to the aquarium and pickup-”   
  
Denny looks back over to Rex, realizing they don’t know who he is, “say what’s your name? And what should Kenny look for?”

Rex sits down on the couch and puts his hands together as he turns his head away from the prying eyes in the room, “could we do this when  _ he’s _ not in the room?”

Denny looks around the room, before realizing he must be talking about MetalBeard, “what’s wrong with him?”   
  
“He might try to kill me, and I don’t think I can really defend myself in this body. And you know Benny would probably be upset if I got his body destroyed.”

Denny looks from MetalBeard who has a surprised expression on his face to Rex, not sure what to do about this, “okay, well uh, new rule, no killing Benny’s soulmate in my house. MetalBeard, you won’t hurt this guy right?”   
  
“I, uh, will try not to?” He says as more of a question than an answer.   
  
Rex sighs and finally answers the question, “alright then. I’m Rex Dangervest, a pretty buff guy in a dark blue vest and scuffed up jeans, and Benny should be wearing a cute cowboy hat with a vest on it, he was still wearing it when he went on the penguin tour.”   
  
“Penguin tour?” Denny asks, completely unaware of MetalBeard’s brain breaking as he realized who was in front of him.   
  
“Yeah, he said he liked penguins so I bought him a special tour for it.”   
  
“Well that was sweet-”   
  
“Didn’t we kill ye?” MetalBeard asks plainly, and Rex’s screen glitches for a few seconds as he adjusted himself, not expecting genuine confusion from MetalBeard.

“I mean you guys beat me up pretty bad, but I can’t die. Kind of like Benny, I think it’s cause of our history with relics messing us up.”   
  
Denny looks over to MetalBeard, raising a finger as they ask, “youuuu, killed Benny’s soulmate?”

“Arrr, it appears so but the crew at the time didn’t know that. All we knew was he was scheming to destroy the city.”

“I was just trying to send the city into the realm of the man upstairs! I wasn’t trying to do anything bad like kill anyone. And I apologized for it and am working to be a better person.”   
  
“Oh well that be alright then,” MetalBeard gives a little shrug at Rex’s explanation.   
  
“Wait, for real?” This was going much better than the Lucy encounter.   
  
“Well ye seem genuine, and if ye really be Blue’s soulmate, ye can’t be that bad. He’s a good soul.”

After that big emotional moment, Kenny finally walks into the room, a seemingly nice looking guy in a yellow shirt who looks pretty lost, “okay so I’ve been half listening, and am very confused.”   
  
Denny tries to quickly sum it up, “well we have Benny’s soulmate here, a guy named Rex, who apparently our friend MetalBeard tried to kill in the past for uh, what exactly did you do?”

“I tried to bring the city into the realm of the man upstairs.”   
  
“Yeah that.”   
  
“That’s a lot-” Kenny doesn’t get a lot of words in before the doorbell rings, “are we expecting anymore guests?”   
  
Denny shakes their head, “I don’t believe so.”   
  
Kenny gestures ‘oh well’, before going over to the door and opening it, to reveal two frantic individuals.    
  
“Long time no see Kenny,” Jenny says, giving a forced smile as a guy in a cowboy hat nervously stands behind her.   
  
Kenny looks over to Denny in the living room, and says in a way that doesn’t make it seem like two family members that haven’t been seen in over twenty years are there, “hey honey, your siblings are here.”   
  
Denny walks over and drags them both by the hand and puts them onto the couch, sighing as they do so, “at least we don’t have to go out to find you Benny.”   
  
Jenny and Benny match Rex’s nervous polite sitting posture, all pressing their hands together as they look to the floor, like they’re kids being called into the principal office.   
  
But before dealing with them Denny looks over to MetalBeard, “thanks for bringing him here dude, but I got this big family drama to deal with and,”   
  
“Aye aye,” MetalBeard raises his hand cutting them off, “no need to say more matey, I best be heading out anyways, send me one of ‘em text messages as an update after you work everything out.”   
  
“Will do captain,” Denny waves him goodbye and waits for the door to fully shut before looking with disappointment at the three on the couch. They direct their negative energy at Jenny first, “so how exactly did you get here?”

“Oh uh, Benny called me that he couldn’t find Rex, so he drove to pick me up and we headed here.”   
  
“And how long have you been in contact with Benny?”   
  
“Since he broke out of a government facility three months ago…”

“And you didn’t tell us he was back???”

“We haven’t talked since, ya know. I figured you wouldn’t want to hear from me, and Benny is still recovering, he said he wasn’t able to face the squad again. He’s working through a lot and-”

“Yo aren’t you the special?” Kenny breaks the dramatic tension as he asks his question, pointing at Benny in Rex’s body.   
  
Denny blinks a few times giving Rex’s body a few good looks before looking over to Kenny, “he does kind of look like him.”   
  
“Wait special? You mean like the chosen one thingy?” Benny asks, and Rex finds himself burying his robotic head in his hands in shame. Benny talked in his higher voice he tried ever so hard to pretend wasn’t his natural speaking voice. It was recognizable to anyone that heard him before. At least MetalBeard had left before he heard him.   
  
Denny looks surprised to hear that old voice come from such a… unique guy, “oh shit he is the special? Benny, your soulmate is the special?”   
  
Benny looks over to Rex who seems to be having a breakdown, “I mean I guess, is the special the guy who got the piece of resistance and stopped the president from killing everyone?”   
  
“That’s him,” Kenny is pressing a finger to his chin as he thinks and Jenny is silently freaking out as she sits on the couch, “wait I thought his name was something, something you didn’t hear a lot…”   
  
“It was Emmet!” Denny points out, “yeah he looked a lot different a few years back, didn’t he have a cute little orange vest-”

Jenny, not one to let things like this go on for long, jumps up, getting the attention of the other ex-astronauts in the room, “GUYS can you STOP please.”

“Huh?” Denny and Kenny ask in unison.

Jenny scrambles to find the right words as Rex continues to have a terrible mental health day on the couch, “that’s kinda his deadname, he goes by Rex now and if you could respect that it would probably be great.”

The couple both look horrified at their grievance and Denny sputters an apology, “sorry, I didn’t realize, that you uh, um…”   
  
“It’s whatever,” Rex responds with a low volume, still keeping his head down in his hands.   
  
“Wait,” Kenny says in more of a whisper to Denny, “didn’t the special, like, die?”   
  
“He uh, died but got better!” Benny speaks up, hoping to change the topic, “Kinda like me, haha, no wonder we’re soulmates, we’re so much alike!”   
  
Benny looks over to Rex, who’s still keeping his head down, and offers a hand for him to hold. Rex slowly takes it, causing Benny to give a small genuine smile, and start talking again, “I mean we both are really cool, and like the color blue, and are having a hard time connecting with old friends cause we’ve been gone so long. And we both like spaceships, Rex isn’t quite as into them as me, but he’s actually has a few cool blueprints for like theoretical spaceships he’s made before!”   
  
“Oh my god he likes spaceships,” Kenny mutters.   
  
“That really seals the soulmate deal doesn’t it,” Denny agrees.   
  
Benny rolls his eyes at that, it wasn’t like loving spaceships were his one defining trait, it was just like in his top five traits. Though he doesn’t have much time to focus on his annoyance, as he gets a soft warm feeling in him as Rex lifts his head and has the screen set to a small smile, giving Benny’s hand a small squeeze as he relaxes.

Jenny, happy to see that everyone was more relaxed, takes a seat back on the couch, “so uh, how have you guys been?”   
  
Denny squints, not quite ready to move on from questioning her, but sighs, figuring they can get back to that later, “well after I was brought back to life, I kind of became an adrenaline junkie, which through a series of wacky hijinks involving multiple lawyers I ended up as a race car driver, and have been bringing home trophies ever since. Kenny, was helping organize underground stuff for Master Builders before Taako Tuesday, but since Master Builders are legal now, he’s become an internet vlogger. I’m still not quite sure what that means.”   
  
Kenny wraps his arm around Denny giving a small laugh, “I’m the tech expert of the family.”   
  
Denny gives him a kiss on the cheek and Jenny makes a gagging sound. Denny pretends not to notice as they return to questioning them, “so what have you all been up to?”   
  
Jenny shrugs, “I’ve been busy being a state official necromancer.”   
  
Benny shrugs, “I literally woke up three months ago and have just been what Rex calls ‘vibing’ in his apartment while he works on his online stuff for his doctorate.”

Rex, perking up at a question to show off his success, “well I’m pretty busy guy, I’ve been busy working on my thesis right now, but I was a pretty successful model for like 6 months before moving on from that, and while that was going on I was working as a script doctor on some major theatrical releases coming out next summer, and I have a few patents bringing in money, like my hands, Benny shows those off.”   
  
Benny happily reaches one of his hands out, “Rex made these, they’re completely prosthetic, but I can feel with them, I’m hoping once we figure out what’s wrong with us we can upgrade my suit with this technology.”   
  
“Did you just say ‘wrong with us?’”   
  
“Ah,” Benny lowers his hand at that question, “yeah, so um, we’ve switched like under every full moon for the last few months… There might be something wrong with our bond.”   
  
“Oh why don’t you have Kenny look it over,” Denny gets out of Kenny’s arm wrap and motions to a hallway, “he’s done a few Fate String experiments in the past, and we should still have the equipment for it.”   
  
“Why would you do Fate String experiments?” Jenny asks, looking from Kenny to Denny with curiosity.   
  
“Well you see dear sister, after I died, my string was severed with Kenny. You remember that, right? Well anyways, after I was brought back and we got married he was wondering if we could get it back.”   
  
“And could you?” Benny is the one who asks, his eyes darting between the two as he awaits an answer.

“Well,” Denny holds up a finger to Benny signaling they needed to explain more before they could answer that, “the experiments revealed that the Fate String could manifest itself through years of of slow mutual trust between two people, but it was just as likely to suddenly form between two people who suddenly acted in a dangerous and romantic moment. So me being the sane person I am leapt off the side of a clip and had Kenny catch me.”

“And?” Benny was on the edge of his seat here.   
  
“Bam!” Denny held up their hand, “we had our Fate String back, this one is a little different than the one we shared before, but it still means the world to both of us. Now Kenny,” Denny looks over to their husband, “get the two lovebirds to the lab room, I’ll stay here and interrogate Jennyfer.”   
  
Benny lets out a laugh, “oooh, they used your full name you’re in trouble man.”   
  
Jenny ‘playfully’ punches him in the shoulder for that, Rex asks her to, “please not hit my body.” as she does so.   
  
  


  
  


Benny and Rex follow Kenny into his lab room and he starts hooking up wires to the both of them.   
  
“Heh, like I’m back in HQ,” Benny jokes, and tries to laugh after saying that. But his laughter quickly turns awkward as he doesn’t get as much as smile from Kenny.   
  
Kenny gets the last electromagnetic pulse wire placed onto Rex, and turns on a screen, “okay so I need you two do something romantic.”   
  
“Wuh,” Benny says, not sure what to make of that request.   
  
“The Fate String feeds off interactions between you, if you do something romantic I should get a big enough reading to see what’s going on between the two of you.”

Rex interjects now, “yeah, thing is, we’re not at the romantic part of our relationship yet. We’re not even at the relationship part of it yet.”

“But you guys were talking about how you were perfect for each other earlier.”

Benny scratches the back of his head, eyes falling to the ground, “yeah it’s like, we know we should be like in L-word right now but I just feel, bad…”   
  
“He still loves Lenny,” Rex replies plainly, trying to pretend he doesn’t see Benny’s hurt look at him saying that, “which is fine. Benny didn’t ask to be my soulmate, he shouldn’t have to give up his love for me. If he doesn’t want to love me that’s fine.”

“But I do love you Rex,” Benny says, his voice dripping with confusion and pain and honesty.   
  
Rex’s screen instantly turns off at that response, and his heart is beeping loudly as the computer to the side of the two starts blowing through outputs, Kenny quickly grabbing a nearby piece of paper to write down what he can read.   
  
Benny wasn’t focusing on that right now, instead he was leaning in close, unsure if Rex could see him with the screen deactivated, “Rex? Are you still there?”   
  
Rex says something but it comes out as glitched out beeps, causing Benny to tilt his head and ask, “can you repeat that?”   
  
“I lo vvve y ou too,” Rex’s confession comes out broken with static mixed in, but Benny couldn’t care less, and pulls Rex into a tight hug that the two remained embraced in for a long time. 

They eventually break from their manly hug from Kenny making a loud cough, getting their attention.   
  
“So guys, from the reading it looks the Fate String itself is fine.”   
  
“Then why do we keep switching?” Rex asks.   
  
“Well, it also seems the Fate String can’t tell if Benny’s body is alive or dead. It’s like a computer signal, constantly sending a signal to check if he’s alive, and it isn’t getting any response at all. I mean Jenny’s a pretty accomplished necromancer, she was able to bring Denny back well enough the Fate String didn’t question if they were alive, maybe she can heal you up to Benny?”   
  
Benny sighs as he shakes his head, “my body is like major horror movie levels of messed there’s too many tangled wires in there that if she would try healing me it would just cause me to turn into a disgusting pile of flesh.”

“Okay why don’t we just unravel all your wires and then fix you up?” Rex asks, making a pull apart motion with his hands.

Benny’s shoulders slump with that question, “I don’t have my blueprints, and Jenny doesn’t have them, and I can’t remember how exactly I go together, so it would be like a monkey throwing a hand grenade to try to fix me.”

  
  


“Well Blacktron should have your blueprints,” Kenny interjects.   
  
“What-” Is all Benny can get in before The door to the dark lab room is slammed open and Denny drags Jenny in by her hand.   
  
“Kenneth, did you know Jenny had a daughter and never told us?”   
  
“Oh uh, no?” Kenny answers not really sure how to handle this.   
  
“Wait, you have a kid?” Benny springs up, running over to his sister, “I’m an uncle??? You didn’t bring this up???”   
  
“First off she’s like 26 so she’s not a kid, and secondly nobody ever asked if I ever had a kid,” Jenny looks over to Denny with a straight face as she says to them, “and maybe that could have been brought up if someone didn’t cut me out of their life for bringing them back to life.”

“What???” Denny seems offended at that accusation, “you’re the one who cut me out of your life for being responsible for Benny’s death!”

“Why would I cut you out of my life??? I worked so hard to bring you back, you’re family Denny. I love you, I love Benny, and I would do anything for you guys!”

Denny seems really confused by this statement, letting Jenny’s arm go as they look down at the floor, “I think we might have had a twenty year long misunderstanding.”

As the two grow silent, Kenny looks back to the two love birds and continues his explanation, “so like I was saying before whatever that was, Blacktron bought all of Classic Space’s assets after it shut down. They have your blueprints somewhere in their archives, that’s probably how they were able to make the C3NT-BOT.”   
  
Jenny, ready to distract herself from the regret of missing Denny from her life for twenty years when she didn’t need to, “what is the Cent bot?”

“I’ve seen it all over the Blacktron social media, it apparently has all the same features Blue had but with like an HD screen and also might have the ability to assassinate people, that part was kind of vague in the blog post about it.”

No one seems worried about this and Jenny tries to convey that they should be worried, “guys?? What does Blue need to work?”   
  
“Batteries?” Denny tries to suggest to feel included.   
  
“No- a human brain, Blacktron forced someone into a robot shell, Kenny do they have multiple of these Cent bots?”   
  
Kenny shakes his head, “from what I’ve seen it’s just the one and-”

“Oh I get it,” Rex says, his screen lighting up as all the others in the room turn to look at him, “the robot is called Cent cause it’s Penny, which is why the Penny body in Jenny’s fridge doesn’t have a brain!”

Denny and Kenny look over to Jenny for an explanation on the fridge thing, but don’t get a chance to ask before Benny asks, “why would Blacktron do that to her? Didn’t she do everything they wanted? She got Classic Space shut down and me locked away.”   
  
“Maybe she did it to herself,” Denny says, once again trying to feel included.   
  
“No that’s not right,” Jenny says shaking her head, “she loves herself too much to have just thrown her body out, it seems she probably wasn’t in control of the situation.”   
  
The rest of the evening involved Kenny and Denny yelling at Jenny for keeping the corpse of her ex-girlfriend in her fridge. While that was happening Rex and Benny shared their kiss and switched back, and Rex went to eat some of the now melted cotton candy ice cream, and also freak out when he found a penguin hidden away under his cowboy hat. After much debate, the penguin was left with Denny and Kenny for safekeeping before the other three headed back to the apartment complex for the night. 

Benny and Rex fell asleep together that night, like they had for the last few months, but this time there was something there that wasn’t there before. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, to check on updates to the fic and art I'm making to go along with it check out my Tumblr here: https://sweet-general-mayhem.tumblr.com/tagged/unraveled-wires


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